The Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) will soon have a new beatified: last Sunday pope Benedict XVI signed the decree on the miracle that paves the way for father Clemente Vismara’s beatification. Missionary in Burma for 65 years and dead in Mongping in 1988, Vismara – born in Agrate Brianza, Italy – will be beatified on 26th of June in the Cathedral’s Square of Milan during a ceremony which will celebrate two other great figures within the ambrosian context: sister Enrichetta Alfieri and father Serafino Morazzone.

Father Vismara arrived in Burma (officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar) in 1923, as this country still was a British colony; then the Japanese invasion, the independence, the communist regime, the closing of borders to the arrival of new foreign missionaries, the change in the country’s name in what today is called Myanmar would have happen. Father Clemente experienced all these historical seasons in the name of loyalty towards the people living in his remote villages situated in the mountains. And when he celebrated his 60 years of priesthood the Catholic Church of Myanmar dedicated him the cover of its calendar calling him «Patriarch of the Church of Burma».