The Epiphany: God’s revelation even to the Gentiles
 

The celebration of Epiphany can be considered as another Mission Day: Jesus shows himself even to those who were not Jews. Through his missionary spirit Joseph De Piro helped Jesus arrive even at the Gentiles.

De Piro: a promotor of the evangelisation ad gentes

Joseph De Piro (1877-1933) lived at a time when the missionary spirit was quite alive in the Church. This same spirit could not but make of the Servant of God a man full of missionary zeal! Fr Angelo Mizzi, a Maltese Capuchin, dedicated nine pages of his Volume II of his “L’Apostolato Maltese” to short biographical notes about the Maltese diocesan priests who had spent their whole life or part of it working in the mission countries. It is most interesting to say that this same Mizzi has felt it his duty that at the end of this collection of short lives he put a special note about someone who had never left Malta for long, but who could rightly be put side by side with the Maltese missionaries: “A special mention goes to our own Missionary, Mgr De Piro ... God called him back just two weeks before his mission trip… to go to the Maltese Mission in Ethiopia … All Maltese could see in him the profound and generous attitudes of a true apostle and missionary, even though he never set foot on a mission land.”