Fr Ennio Mantovani SVD has been remembered as a dedicated missionary priest whose life and ministry touched the hearts of many, especially through his years of committed service in Papua New Guinea and Australia.

Fr Ennio returned peacefully to the Lord on October 18 in Sydney, Australia and his Requiem Mass took place on Tuesday, October 28 at the St Arnold Janssen Chapel in Marsfield.

The chief celebrant at the Mass was Provincial, Fr Asaeli Rass SVD, with Archbishop Douglas Young SVD, the Archbishop Emeritus of Mount Hagen in PNG, giving the homily and Fr Bill Burt SVD delivering the eulogy.

“Fr Ennio’s unwavering dedication to intercultural understanding, missiology, anthropology, faith formation, and missionary discipleship remains a lasting legacy within the Society of the Divine Word and beyond,” said Fr Rass.

“As we commend Fr Ennio to the eternal embrace of our loving God, we also give thanks for the gift of his life and vocation. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.”

Fr Ennio, originally from Italy, was a member of the Society of the Divine Word for almost 70 years. He served for 15 years as a missionary in the PNG highlands, after which he worked for 20 years at the Melanesian Institute in Goroka, PNG, researching, lecturing and writing on Melanesian religions and cultures. In 2003 he took up residence in Melbourne and began teaching full-time at the Yarra Theological Union until his retirement, during which he wrote books about missionary life, theology and anthropology. Before moving into retirement care in Sydney, he was also engaged in pastoral ministry and chaplaincy to the Italian community in Melbourne.

Throughout the Funeral Mass, Fr Ennio’s coffin was adorned with items of significance relating to his religious missionary vocation, and in particular, his time in PNG.

In his homily, Archbishop Young said Fr Ennio’s death was a transition to new life in God’s presence, rather than an end.

Referring to the Gospel reading, “Unless a grain of what dies, it remains a single grain …” (John 12:24), Archbishop Young said that a dead seed will never come back to life, but a dormant seed can one day germinate.

“It requires water and oxygen and the right temperature. It is basically just suspended, or sometimes we would even say resting. So, even in popular language and biblical language, we refer to death as the transition, as a sleep.

“Our Bible often talks about sleeping in death of resting from our labours … so for the disciple of Jesus, who, like St Paul, has attempted to live in Christ, Paul says, ‘For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain’ (Phil 1:21). There is no great jolt between this life and the next.”

Archbishop Young said this applies in the single life, the married life and religious life.

“In the case of clergy, they have celebrated the Eucharist all their lives, a foretaste of the real thing which comes after death,” he said. “And for religious, as Fr Ennio has been for so many years, having taken a vow for poverty, it is a smooth transition to pass into a non-material world with spiritual richness. Having taken a vow for chastity, it is a smooth transition to pass into the world of fulfilment of all relationships, and for one who has made a vow for obedience, it must be a wonderful experience to discover that the will of God, which they attempted to obey their whole life, is now that they should enjoy joy with the Father and the Blessed Trinity and all the saints in heaven forever.”

Archbishop Young said Fr Ennio, who arrived in as a young missionary to PNG in the 1960s was informed very much by the Second Vatican Council.

“He was always guided by the idea that the light is already there, and it was partly his task to make that light more available, to take away the areas of darkness and anything that might be obscuring the light,” he said.

“For someone like that to pass into the beatific vision must be quite amazing. If we are open to the light that we experience this side of the grave, how much more will we be open to the light that comes after?”

He said one of Fr Ennio’s greatest contributions to the understanding of culture and mission in PNG was to identify that for Papua New Guineans, their core value is life and living life to the full.

“There too, the task was to enable life to flourish. Hence all the activities that enrich life in the pastoral, educational, health and cultural aspects.”

Archbishop Young said that when Fr Ennio and many other missionaries began their work in PNG in the 1960s there was an atmosphere of great hope and optimism in the wake of Vatican II.

“They were energetic and active and positive in all of their pastoral, educational, health and culture and language studies. They put up with the sacrifices involved in that, the isolation, the challenges from lack of services, poor roads, poor communications, Poor health services. They made that sacrifice because they had great faith in what was to come,” he said.

“Many of that vintage look back now with some degree of disappointment. I think that also affected Fr Ennio in these last years of his life.

“So, now, as he enters the fulfillment of all that he has strived for throughout his life, he hears the Lord say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’.

“And now he discovers how the kingdom was growing through all those small acts of devotion and of service. In some cases, there may not be a lot on the surface to show for it, but in God's plan and in God's wisdom about how the Kingdom grows, we as disciples of Jesus, can have no doubt that the seeds of Fr Ennio’s labours for the kingdom will bear much fruit.

“The Bible tells us, ‘You are no longer aliens or foreign visitors. You are citizens, like all the saints and part of God's household’ (Ephesians 2:19). That is our prayer for Fr Ennio today, that that is his experience of fulfillment.”

PHOTOS

TOP RIGHT: Fr Ennio Mantovani SVD with one of his more recent books.

MIDDLE LEFT: Fr Ennio with his parents on his ordination day in Italy.

BOTTOM RIGHT: One of Fr Ennio's several published books - 'History of Yobai in Pictures' - documenting pictorially his years of missionary life in Papua New Guinea.