On December 27, 1964, Father Francesco Spoto died in Biringi (Congo) as a result of mistreatment suffered fifteen days earlier.
This article is intended not only as a memorial, but also as a theological and spiritual reflection on a testimony that has much to say to our times. A testimony that can be summed up in a simple but profound image: the small, silent steps of a Servant of the Poor.
Not giant steps. Not noisy steps. Not protagonist steps. But small steps. Silent. Faithful. Daily. Steps that accompany.
Steps that serve. Steps that love.
And these steps, violently halted in Biringi on December 27, 1964, continue today. They continue in the memory of the Church. They continue in the lives of those who were accompanied. They continue in intercession from heaven.
Who was Francesco Spoto: a life given
Francesco Spoto was born in Raffadali, in the province of Agrigento, on July 8, 1924, into a modest but deeply Christian family. Sicily in those years was a land of contrasts: poverty and faith, beauty and suffering, tradition and change.
At the age of only twelve, Francesco entered the Congregation of the Servants of the Poor, founded by Blessed Giacomo Cusmano. It was an early choice, as was often the case at the time, but one that already revealed a profound calling. The Servants of the Poor are a special congregation: not only contemplation, not only action, but concrete service to the poorest, the least, the discarded.
Francesco grew up in this spirituality. He studied. He trained. He matured. And on July 22, 1951, he was ordained a priest. He was twenty-seven years old. These were the post-war years, years of reconstruction, of hope but also of hardship. Italy emerged from the world war in ruins. Sicily still bore the wounds of endemic poverty.
Father Spoto devoted himself to teaching, to the formation of young people, to vocational accompaniment, to service in the Congregation. He did not seek prestigious roles. He did not aspire to ecclesiastical careers. He served. Simply. Faithfully. In obscurity.
But in the summer of 1959, something unexpected happened: at only thirty-five years of age, he was elected Superior General of the Congregation of the Servants of the Poor. He was young. He was shy. He did not look like a charismatic leader. But he was chosen. Why? Perhaps precisely for this reason: because he did not seek power. Because he did not like to be in the limelight. Because he knew how to serve.
And for four years he led the Congregation. Not from the height of an office. Not from afar. But walking. Visiting communities. Listening to his brothers. Accompanying young people. With small steps. Silent. Faithful.
Fr. Giovanni Avena: “I felt his footsteps beside mine.”
To truly understand who Father Spoto was, we must listen to those who knew him. And, in particular, we must listen to the extraordinary testimony of Father Giovanni Avena, written in 1998, thirty-four years after the martyrdom.
Father Avena was fifteen when he first met Father Spoto. And this high school boy asked him, with the audacity typical of adolescence, if he could buy some books to enable him to win a trip to Lourdes.
Spoto could have dismissed the boy with a joke. He could have felt disturbed. He could have said, “I don’t have time for this nonsense.”
But he didn’t. Father Avena recounts: “He was not surprised, nor did he feel bothered. He took a good half of them and assured me that he would pay me for them when I had finished selling the other half.”
A small gesture. Seemingly insignificant. But decisive. Because that fifteen-year-old boy, welcomed in this way, decided to stay. To continue. To become a priest. And today, more than sixty years later, he can testify: “I felt his footsteps beside mine.”
This sentence is the heart of it all. “I felt his footsteps beside mine.” Not: “I followed in his footsteps.” Not: “He guided me.” But: “I felt his footsteps beside mine.”
Beside. Not in front. Not behind. But beside. Presence. Companionship. Accompaniment.
And Father Avena continues, describing those crucial years between adolescence and youth, when everything seems possible and everything seems impossible: “Those were the years of the last stretch of the road that led me to ordination. The years of great enthusiasm for the goal that was now close, but also the years – my twenties! – of great thoughts of love and renunciation, of victories and defeats, of second thoughts and great idealistic passions, of plans for the future and anxieties about the present, of doubts, expectations, and disappointments.
The years in which, paradoxically, you encounter life and believe you are confronting God.
And in those crucial years, “Fr. Spoto was by my side with attention and discretion, with tenderness and rigor, with serenity. He did not feel like being a ‘father,’ a superior, or a zealous advisor. He was simply himself, words and silence, prayer and expectation, flesh and blood, tears and joy, the sweat of sowing and the joy of harvesting.“
”He was simply himself.“ He did not play a role. He did not wear a mask. He did not pretend. He was simply himself. And this authenticity was fatherhood. It was authority. It was education.
But what does ”small silent steps” actually mean? We must analyze the three elements separately and then put them back together in summary.
THE STEPS: walking alongside
A step is movement. It is walking. It is moving forward. But it is also rhythm. It is measure. It is a presence that makes itself felt.
Antonio Machado, the great Spanish poet, wrote immortal verses: “Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar” – “Wayfarer, there is no path, the path is made by walking.” There is no pre-marked road. There is no predefined route. The path is created by walking. Step by step.
And Father Spoto walked. Not alone. But alongside. This is the key: walking alongside.
Those who walk ahead are in command. They decide the route. They set the pace. And the others must follow, must adapt, must obey.
Those who walk behind are totally dependent. They never decide. They never choose. They never take risks. They wait for the other to tell them what to do.
But those who walk alongside accompany. They do not command. They are not dependent. But they are present. At the other’s pace. With the other’s rhythm. Respecting the other’s timing.
This was Father Spoto. Father Avena recounts a revealing episode: when he returned from Lourdes, happy to have served the sick priests, Father Spoto “seemed indifferent to the story of the trip. He asked me not how many sick priests I had served, but whether I had learned to pray from them in Lourdes.”
Not: ” What did you do?“ Not: ”How many did you serve?“ But: ”Did you learn to pray? Did you encounter God? Did you grasp the essential?”
A question that takes you aback. That goes to the heart. That is not satisfied with outward appearances. A question that reveals: here is someone who truly accompanies. Who does not stop at the surface. Who seeks being, not just doing.
SMALLNESS: the choice of humility
But why must the steps be “small”? Why not big? Why not fast? Why not impressive?
Father Avena tells us with a concise but profound phrase: “His ‘great’ humanity? That of feeling small in the eyes of God, fragile, meek, and fraternal in the eyes of men.”
Small in the eyes of God. Not out of devaluation. Not out of self-contempt. But out of truth. Because before God we are all small. All creatures. All dependent.
And recognizing this smallness is not humiliation. It is liberation. Because when you are small, you don’t have to pretend to be big. You don’t have to carry impossible burdens. You don’t have to save the world on your own.
You are small. And God is big. And that is enough.
But Father Spoto was small even before men. Not out of necessity. But by choice. The most significant episode is recounted by Father Avena: “When we told him that we had met a Jesuit priest, a professor at the Biblical Institute, who had agreed to come weekly to the Cusmano college to give lectures and to be our spiritual director, he took the first opportunity to travel to Rome to meet him and listen to him. He wanted to participate in the lecture with the community, but he asked us to introduce him as a passing guest and not as Superior General.“
Superior General. He could have introduced himself as such. He could have sat in the place of honor. But he asked to be introduced as a ”passing guest.“
”Many years later, I revealed this episode to Fr. Martini, who had since become a bishop and cardinal.
He was impressed.“
Carlo Maria Martini, who became one of the most important cardinals in the world, remembered that ”passing guest” who was actually the Superior General. And he was impressed. Because choosing to be small is rare. It goes against the grain. It is evangelical.
SILENCE: the eloquence of presence
And now we come to the third element: silence. Because the steps are not only small. They are also silent.
But be careful: not the silence of absence. Not the silence of indifference. Not the silence of fear. But the silence of attentive presence. The silence of contemplation. The silence of custody.
Father Avena describes Father Spoto as “word and silence.” Not only word. Not only silence. But both. In balance. In harmony.
“The explicit and direct moments of ‘teaching’ by Fr. Spoto were almost non-existent. Partly his institutional role, partly his natural shyness made him appear serious and austere, but not at all paternalistic or authoritarian. If anything, it was the frank linearity of his reasoning and the direct and decisive way in which he dealt with everyday situations or existential issues that made him authoritative. This led to his sometimes rough and taciturn manner, bordering on aloofness.”
Rough. Taciturn. Almost aloof. That’s how he might have appeared. At first glance.
But: “After the initial and inevitable bewilderment, one could not fail to see in that roughness the endured fatigue of shyness, which both hid and revealed a gentle and serene personality, whose reserve was simply the jealous guarding of great and deep feelings, of strong and convinced friendships.”
That was the truth. His roughness hid tenderness. His reserve guarded depth. His silence protected great feelings.
Like a treasure in a clay pot. Like a pearl in a rough oyster. Like gold hidden in rock.
Father Spoto guarded. In silence. In concealment. In fidelity. Like Mary who “kept all these things in her heart.”
The years of the Council: when dreams become reality
But Father Spoto was not only a man of silence. He was also a man of dreams. Theological dreams. Prophetic dreams. Dreams that come from God.
The 1960s were years of great ferment. The Second Vatican Council was opening windows. It was letting in fresh air. It was changing the Church.
And Father Spoto lived all this with incredible intensity. Father Avena recounts: “The early 1960s were the years of conciliar upheaval. Father Spoto often came to Rome for institutional reasons, but he did not hide a motive that perhaps interested him more: spending entire days and long nights in conversation with us theology students at the Cusmano College.”
Long nights of conversation. With young students. Talking about the Council. About new horizons. About the possibilities that were opening up.
“One evening we talked at length about the events of the Council and the new horizons toward which the Church was beginning to be pushed. He confided to me that he himself felt personally shaken by the disruptive nature of the Council event. I sensed in his words the vibrations of someone who had dreamed and was now beginning to see some of his dreams or intuitions come true.”
He had dreamed. For years. Perhaps for decades. Broader horizons. Deeper theology. A more open Church.
“Faced with my amazement, he tried to make me understand how he felt as the gray blanket of textbook theology, of his years of study, melted and thinned away inside him, beyond which he had been able to live only the dream, the hope of broader and closer horizons, and the burning desire to overcome the unresigned mortification of his intelligence and his intelligent love for the Church.”
A gray blanket. Mortification of intelligence. Narrow horizons. This had been his formative journey.
But he had not resigned himself. He had dreamed. And that dream had kept him alive. It had kept him open. It had saved him from aridity.
And now, with the Council, that dream was becoming reality. And Father Spoto fed on it. Greedily.
“I was so happy when he invited me to spend time in the bookshops on Via Conciliazione. He stocked up, for me and for himself, on the best of Congar, Rahner, De Lubac, Chenu, Daniélou: all theologians who had been censored before Vatican II and then rehabilitated and appointed by John XXIII and Paul VI as conciliar experts or consultants.”
The great theologians who were renewing the Church. And Father Spoto read them. He studied them. He loved them.
Because dreaming is not remaining in abstraction. It is nourishing oneself. It is studying. It is growing.
August 4, 1964: the last meeting, the last word
And we come to the decisive moment. Summer 1964. Father Spoto has to leave for the Congo, for the mission in Biringi. There are problems in the community. There are growing political tensions. The situation is uncertain, potentially dangerous.
Father Avena is in Milan. He receives a phone call: Father Spoto wants to see him. Urgently. At Fiumicino airport.
“On the afternoon of August 4, a brother told me that Father Spoto was already in Rome and wanted to meet me. I called him on the phone at Perseveranza. He asked me to return immediately and wait for him at Fiumicino airport, from where he would be flying to the Congo at around 11 p.m. that same day.”
One last meeting. Before departure.
“In the rush of the phone call, we hadn’t agreed on a meeting place. He was the first to see me and called out to me. I tried in vain to spot the silhouette of a priest in the dense and colorful crowd of an August airport. I felt someone take me by the arm: it was him, dressed in civilian clothes, a little awkward but beaming.”
In plain clothes. Because he was going into a difficult situation. “A little awkward but beaming.” Awkward because he wasn’t used to it. But beaming because he was going. He was answering the call.
“He hugged me with a tenderness I had never felt from him before.”
A tenderness I had never felt before. Why? Because he knew it might be the last hug? We don’t know. But that gesture remains.
And then the conversation: “I immediately asked him about the length of his visit to Biringi so that we could decide on the date of my imminent ordination. He took me by the arm and smiled at me, with the air of someone who wants to be forgiven in advance for some unpleasant news. ‘Prepare for the ordination,’ he said, ‘agree on the date with the vicar general, but don’t take into account the date of my return. I don’t know if I’ll be there, or when.’
I don’t know if I’ll be there, or when. Heavy words. Words that say: I may not return.
He avoided acknowledging my disappointment and immediately started talking about Biringi. “There were serious problems in the community,” he told me, “and some clouds were beginning to appear on the political horizon in Congo.” For this reason, he could only plan for an indefinite stay.
Problems in the community. Clouds on the political horizon. An indefinite stay.
“I saw extreme tension in his face, in his gestures and words, and his futile efforts to hide it.”
Extreme tension. He was afraid. He was worried. But he was going. Because he had to go.
And then the last recommendation. The last message. The last testament: “I wished him a safe journey and a successful mission. Almost compelled by my good wishes, he too wanted to say something auspicious to me. He reminded me that ordination would be only one stage in the history of my life and my vocation. He repeated to me in a dry tone and without rhetoric his idea of the future, which he had expressed to me on other occasions with a touch of poetry and emotion: ‘
Never stop dreaming and realizing God’s dream for you.“
”Never stop dreaming and realizing God’s dream for you.“
This is his legacy. This is his testament. These are the words that Father Spoto leaves us.
Not: ”Remember me.“ Not: ”Pray for me.“ But: ”Never stop dreaming.”
And then the farewell: “He didn’t wait for me to say anything, a word, a reaction, a commitment… He said goodbye by hugging me. He did the same with the others who had come to accompany him and walked slowly and relaxed toward the boarding gate, as if for a short routine trip. He did not turn around for the ritual farewell before disappearing beyond the check-in counter.”
He didn’t turn around.
He didn’t seek a last glance. He didn’t seek a last emotion. He moved on. Towards Biringi. Towards the mission. Towards martyrdom.
And he didn’t turn around.
On December 27, 1964, the footsteps stopped.
The Congo was in chaos. After independence from Belgium (1960), the country had plunged into a bloody civil war. The Simba rebels controlled vast territories. And they considered Western missionaries as enemies. The Biringi mission was in a particularly unstable area. Father Spoto arrived in August 1964 and found the situation he feared. But he stayed. He tried to mediate. He tried to pacify. He tried to keep the community together, but on December 27, 1964, Father Spoto died as a result of the abuse he had suffered fifteen days earlier at the hands of two Simbas who broke his chest with the butt of a rifle. That day, Biringi became a day of death.
Father Spoto was forty years old. Superior General. He had crossed the ocean to be there. To accompany. To serve. To love.
And there, in that remote mission in the heart of Africa, his steps were stopped. Violently. Bloodily.
But Father Avena writes something profound: “He had not dreamed of martyrdom. He had accepted it in the humble awareness of daily suffering when, hesitant but generous, he took on the leadership of the congregation. Biringi made that bloodless but no less piercing martyrdom bloody in his flesh.”
Martyrdom did not begin in Biringi. It began earlier. Much earlier. In daily suffering. In the fatigue of governing. In the loneliness of responsibility. In the tenacity of service.
Biringi was only the fulfillment. The sealing. The transformation of bloodless martyrdom into bloody martyrdom.
The legacy: the steps that continue
But Father Spoto’s steps did not stop. They could not stop.
Fifty-four years after that evening at Fiumicino airport, Father Avena can still write: “I have lived (and still live) in his company, felt his steps beside mine.”
I still live. Present indicative. Not past. Not a nostalgic memory. But a real presence. Living company. Steps that continue.
Because true steps, steps that accompany, steps that love, steps that serve, cannot be stopped by death. They continue. In the hearts of those who have been accompanied. In the lives of those who have received his love. In the living memory of the congregation. In the witness of the Church.
The servant of God Francesco Spoto was beatified on April 21, 2007, in the Cathedral of Palermo.
The Church has officially said: those steps were holy. Those steps were evangelical. Those steps were Christ-like.
And now they shine in the glory of God. Now they walk in the heavenly Jerusalem. But they also continue here. They continue to accompany. They continue to inspire. They continue to call.
The call for today: to walk with small, silent steps
And now the question is addressed to us. Sixty-one years after his martyrdom, what does Father Spoto’s testimony tell us?
It tells us that holiness is possible. Not only for a select few. Not only for extraordinary heroes. But for everyone. For you. For me. For anyone who chooses to walk with small, silent steps.
Accompanying those who are alone
The first call is: to accompany. In our world of growing loneliness, digital isolation, and social fragmentation, accompanying is revolutionary.
I am not asking you to solve other people’s problems. I am only asking you: will you walk alongside them? One hour a week. One phone call a day. One visit a month. Small steps. But decisive ones.
Around you are young people looking for their way. Forgotten elderly people. Abandoned sick people. Foreigners without a homeland. Can you walk with them? Not in front. Not behind. But alongside?
Choose smallness
The second call is: choose smallness. In a world obsessed with visibility, success, and protagonism, smallness is prophecy.
When you do a good deed, don’t photograph it for Instagram. Just do it. In silence. In secret.
When you serve, don’t seek recognition. Just serve. Because service is its own reward.
When you have a role, use it to serve, not to dominate. To accompany, not to command.
Guard silence
The third call is: guard silence. Not empty silence, but full silence. Silence that listens. Silence that welcomes. Silence that guards.
Learn to listen. Truly. Without interrupting. Without judging. Without immediately offering solutions.
Learn to be silent. When someone confides in you, guard it. Do not divulge it. Do not repeat it. Guard it like a treasure.
Learn to contemplate. Dedicate time to prayer. To silence before God. To adoration.
Dream God’s dream
The fourth call is: dream God’s dream. “Never stop dreaming and realizing God’s dream for you.” These were Father Spoto’s last words.
Not your selfish dream. But God’s dream. The dream that God dreams for you. The call. The vocation. God’s plan of love for you.
Seek it in prayer. In listening to the Word. In spiritual direction. In community. And when you find it, realize it. Step by step. Day by day.
Even if it costs you. Even if it’s scary. Even if it seems impossible.
Stay, don’t run away
The fifth call is: stay. When the mission becomes difficult, when service is costly, when accompaniment is burdensome, stay.
In marriage: when crises arise, do you stay or run away? At work: when it becomes heavy, do you stay or give up? In service: when it is costly, do you stay or abandon it?
Staying is the real revolution. In a world that flees as soon as it becomes difficult, staying is prophecy.
Father Spoto went to Biringi. He knew it was dangerous. But he went. And when he arrived and it was even more dangerous, he stayed. Until the end. Until martyrdom.
Conclusion: “He did not turn back.”
And we return to the final image. Fiumicino Airport. August 4, 1964. 11 p.m.
“He walked slowly and relaxed toward the boarding gate, as if for a short routine trip. He did not turn around for the ritual farewell before disappearing beyond the check-in counter.”
He did not turn around.
This is the image we must carry with us. When God calls, we move forward. We do not turn back. We do not look back. We do not regret.
We move forward. With faith. With hope. With love. Even if it costs. Even if it’s scary. Even if it could be the last journey.
Father Spoto did not turn around. And five months later, he was a martyr. But that moving forward without turning back became eternal testimony. It became holiness. It became light for us.
Sixty-one years later, his steps continue. Small steps. Silent. But eternal.
And they call us. They provoke us. They question us: E You? Do you walk like this? Do you accompany? Are you small? Do you guard silence? Do you dream God’s dream? Do you remain when it is difficult?
And when God calls, do you go forward without turning back?
This is the challenge. This is the call. This is possible holiness.
Small steps. Silent. Faithful. Every day. Until the end. Until glory.
Blessed Francesco Spoto, small silent steps of a servant of the poor, pray for us.
Final prayer
Blessed Francesco, you who walked with small silent steps, you who accompanied faithfully, you who chose smallness, you who guarded silence, you who dreamed God’s dream, you who did not turn back.
Teach us to walk as you walked.
Teach us to accompany those who are alone, to walk beside them, not in front or behind, to be a discreet but faithful presence.
Teach us to choose smallness, not to seek the limelight, to serve in hiding, to take the last place.
Teach us to guard silence, the silence that listens, the silence that welcomes, the silence that protects great feelings.
Teach us to dream God’s dream, not to resign ourselves to mediocrity, to believe that broader horizons are possible, to never stop hoping.
And teach us not to turn back when God calls us to difficult missions, when fear assails us, when we would like to turn back.
You who now walk in glory, walk also beside our steps.
Accompany us in our daily labors. Support us in difficult missions. Encourage us in moments of discouragement. Enlighten us in decisive choices.
And when our hour comes, when we are called to pass from this world to the Father, be with us.
Teach us not to turn back, to look ahead, to walk toward the light.
Through Christ our Lord, who said to us, “Follow me,” who walked with us to the cross, who walks with us until the end of time. Amen.
Mons. Vincenzo Bertolone
N.B. Translation from the DeepL Translate website
