Fr. Luigi Faccenda was born August 24, 1920 in San Benedetto Val di Sambro, Bologna, a quaint village on the Italian Apennine Mountains. When he was 12 years old he entered the Seminary of the Conventual Franciscan Order in Faenza. Periods of precarious health conditions forced him to leave the seminary, and return home.
He made his temporary profession of vows in Assisi on August12, 1938, and his perpetual profession in Faenza in 1941. He was ordained a priest on May 18, 1944 in Fognano, a village not too far from Faenza where the local Bishop, Mgr. Battaglia had moved following dramatic war events. Later Fr. Faccenda wrote: “I still tremble upon remembering the day I celebrated my first Holy Mass in the chapel dedicated to the Immaculata in St. Francis Church in Faenza. No one was there, except the other priests ordained with me. Outside, the blast of bombs was the tragic background to our celebration.”
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Since the very beginning of his priestly life, Fr. Faccenda desired to spend it in a missionary outreach that would take him to far away countries. He had always nourished a deep desire to bring the light of the faith and spread the joy of the Gospel message overseas, available to lay down his life as a martyr in a supreme witness to it.
