Blessed Ceferino Namuncurá

Ceferino Namuncurá was born on August 26, 1886, in Chimpay, Río Negro, in Argentine Patagonia. His father was Manuel Namuncurá, a Mapuche cacique, and his mother was Rosario Burgos. He was baptized by the Salesian missionary Domingo Milanesio. In 1897 he entered the Salesian school Pío IX in Buenos Aires, where he grew in prayer, love for the Eucharist and the desire to become a priest and bring the Gospel to his people.

Ill with tuberculosis, he traveled to Italy in 1904 with Bishop Giovanni Cagliero, hoping to continue his studies and recover. He was received by Pope Saint Pius X and studied in Turin and Frascati, but his health declined, and he died in Rome on May 11, 1905, at just eighteen. Pope Paul VI declared his virtues heroic in 1972, and he was beatified in Chimpay on November 11, 2007, before a huge crowd. His feast is August 26, the day of his birth.

Every year around his feast, tens of thousands of pilgrims travel to Chimpay, in Río Negro, to give thanks and ask favors of "Ceferino", as Argentines lovingly call him. His image, in a school uniform or wearing a poncho, appears in homes, roadside shrines and trucks across Argentina.

He is a sign of the meeting between the faith and the Indigenous peoples of Patagonia, and many students and young people ask his help.