Italian Priest Elected Comboni Missionaries Superior General, Succeeds Newly Ordained Auxiliary Bishop of Addis Ababa

Rome, 23 February, 2025 / 8:50 PM

Members of the Religious Institute of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus (MCCJ) have elected Fr. Luigi Fernando Codianni, a native of Italy, as their new Superior General, succeeding Bishop Tesfaye Tadesse Gebresilasie, who was Consecrated Auxiliary Bishop of Ethiopia’s Catholic Archdiocese of Addis Ababa on February 2.

Aged 60, Fr. Luigi Fernando has been serving as MCCJ General Councilor in Rome, and “has considerable religious and missionary experience” in administration and governance from his service in the Comboni circumscriptions of South American nation of Brazil and Italy, his native country, according to a February 21 MCCJ report.

The 6 November 2024 Episcopal appointment of Mons. Tesfaye as Auxiliary Bishop of Addis Ababa prompted his resignation as MCCJ Superior General.

Mons. Tesfaye’s resignation was followed by a letter from MCCJ leadership to members, communicating the functioning of the General Council “in this time of transition”, to culminate in the election of a new Superior General.

Credit: Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus (MCCJ) 

In their letter, the Rome-based MCCJ General Council members said that they had received the news with mixed “feelings and emotions, among which the gratitude to God prevails for the gift that has been given to us so far in the person of Fr. Tesfaye as our Superior General, as well as a confrere.”

In the letter dated 6 November 2024, MCCJ General Council members told their confreres that the “election of the Superior General will be called as soon as possible according to the modalities that we will discern in the coming days,” in line with the Institute’s Rule of Life and relevant statutes.

Credit: Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus (MCCJ)

“We ask everyone to pray with us for our Institute, so that it may be ever more worthy of the task that our Holy Founder has entrusted to us and of the trust that the Holy Father reserves in us in choosing some of us for the ministry of the Episcopate,” they said about their Ethiopian-born confrere, who was first elected MCCJ Superior General during the 18th General Chapter in 2015, and re-elected during the 19th General Chapter held in June 2022 at the Institute's General House in Rome. 

Fr. Luigi Fernando, the successor of Bishop Tesfaye, was born on 13 June 1964 in Italy’s Southeastern region of Celenza Valfortore (FG).

In 1988, he made his First Profession in the the Religious Institute that St. Daniel Comboni founded in June 1867. 

Credit: Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus (MCCJ)

Fr. Luigi Fernando studied theology in São Paulo, Brazil from 1988 to 1993. He was ordained a Priest on 15 May 1993 in Italy’s Catholic Diocese of Lucera-Troia.

He was first commissioned in his native country of Italy, and later continued his ministry in Brazil, where he served as the Provincial Superior of Northeast Brazil. He would return to Italy in 2011.

The newly elected MCCJ Superior General has been serving as General Councillor after he was appointed during the 2022 MCCJ General Chapter; he was assigned the responsibilities of overseeing the MCCJ Europe circumscriptions, the economic sector, and legal representation.

“All the members of the Institute of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus get united in prayer to give thanks to God for their new general superior and to ask God to fill him with wisdom, so to keep on guiding the over 1,000 members of the Institute around the world,” a post sent to ACI Africa via WhatsApp reads.