SEMINARIAN MARTYR

BLESSED ROLANDO RIVI died as a martyr in a little town called Monchio, in the province of Modena, at the age of 14.  He was born in 1931, and began serving Mass at the age of five and made his first Communion on the feast of Corpus Christi, June 16, 1938.

In 1942, at the age of 11, he entered the minor seminary at Marola, and was admired by his teachers as an exemplary student, and a boy of sincere and serious devotion. As was the custom in those days, he was clothed in the cassock, and wore the saturno as part of the regular clerical dress. Even at this young age, he expressed the desire to become a missionary. He was noted as both an excellent singer and musician, participating enthusiastically in the seminary choir.

 He showed himself to be a leader in every activity, and his grandmother is reported to have said that he would end up as “a saint or a scoundrel.” He was known to encourage his friends to come to church for Mass or devotions after a soccer game. During his summer vacation, he continued to dress and live as a seminarian, with daily Mass, rosary, meditation and prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. He said that the cassock was a sign “that I belong to Jesus.”

 In the summer of 1944, the seminary at Marola was occupied by German troops, and Rolando was forced to return home. He was able, however, to continue his studies with the local parish priest. He continued to wear the cassock in public, despite his parents’ concerns that this would make him a target of the anticlerical violence then rampant in north-central Italy. By the time Rolando returned home from the seminary, his former parish priest had been moved out of the area for safety’s sake. In the years immediately after the collapse of Italian fascism in July 1943, nearly 100 priests were murdered by Communist partisans in the part of the Emilia-Romagna known as the “red triangle.”

On April 10, 1945, a group of these partisans kidnapped Rolando as he was studying in a little grove near his home. Later, his parents discovered both his books and a note from the partisans warning them not to look for him. He was taken to a farmhouse, beaten and tortured for three days, under the absurd accusation that he had been a spy for the Germans. He was then dragged into the woods, stripped of his cassock, and shot twice in the head. The partisans rolled his cassock up into a ball and used it to play soccer.

 His father and parish priest discovered his body the following day. He was buried temporarily in the cemetery of the town where he was killed, but tremoved a month later to his native place, San Valentino.

Since the day of his death often falls in Holy Week or Easter week, his liturgical feast is kept on the day of this translation, May 29th.