He would have turned the beauty of 102 years old in a few months, worth at least twice as much because they were lived doing good and tew-thirds of them in Africa.
Father Antonio Bianchi, one of the historical Consolata missionaries in Kenya, passed away more than peacefully in Nairobi, where he had celebrated his century of age in June 2022 with an incredible lucidity and verve that managed to radiate positivity and joie de vivre.
Originally from Verbania, a small Piedmontese town on Lake Maggiore, he was ordained in the Consolata missionary institute in Turin in 1946, being assigned to Portugal. There he began to cultivate a passion for the poorest and the street kids of the suburbs, and his passion for football led him to found a football school that, after 75 years, is still active and bears his name.
In 1954 he moved to Kenya and since then he has never left Africa and his work of assistance to young people. Father Bianchi, tireless, has seen the capital's suburbs grow out of all proportion and the very poor slum communities form. Seventy years of humanity in Kenya is quite a record, as is having been active until the very end, despite some ailments in his later years from which he always recovered surprisingly quickly.
Father Gerardo Martinelli, another pillar of the Consolata in Kenya, who assisted Father Bianchi until the very end, and who informed us of his departure 'into eternity', reminded us on the occasion of his hundredth birthday how 'Father Bianchi's dedication and energy were an example not only for those who came after him from Italy, but also for generations of Kenyan men of the Church'.