Reprinted from the Shrine Church of the Holy Innocents August 8, 2021 Bulletin
Beato Rolando Rivi, ora pro nobis
Born on January 7, 1931, Rolando Rivi entered the seminary when he was only 11 years old, desiring to be a missionary priest.
After the Sept. 8, 1943 Italian armistice with the Allies and subsequent Nazi occupation of northern Italy, groups of partisans were formed to support the Allies’ liberation effort. The movement was initially composed of independent troops or by former officers of the Royal Italian Army.
In Modena, partisan formations were mostly composed by communists, socialists and members of Partito d’Azione (a republican liberal-socialist party), and they were united by animosity toward fascists and an anti-Catholic spirit. Communist partisans, in particular, thought that clergy could be an obstacle for their revolutionary project, and this fed their anticlericalism.
In June 1944, Nazis troops occupied the seminary, and so all the seminarians were sent home. Rolando returned to his hometown of San Valentino.
In San Valentino, the young seminarian never stopped wearing his cassock, despite the rising climate of violence. When his parents suggested he refrain from wearing it for his own safety, Rolando reportedly replied: “I study to be a priest, and these vestments are the sign that I belong to Jesus.”
Four priests were killed by the communist partisan brigades, and Father Olinto Marzocchini, San Valentino’s parish priest and Rolando’s spiritual father, was attacked and subsequently transferred to a more secure place.
On the morning of April 10, 1945, after serving Mass, the 14-year-old took his books and went to the nearby woods, where he was accustomed to studying. Yet this time, he never returned. At noon, his parents, worried because Rolando had not come back for lunch; they went to the woods and found his books on the ground and a sheet of paper, where the following words were written: “Do not search for him. He just came with us partisans for a while.”
Kidnapped and stripped of his cassock, Rolando was imprisoned and tortured for three days by the partisans. Some of the partisans proposed to let him go, since he was only a young boy. But the majority sentenced him to death, in order to have “one less future priest.”
On April 13, Rolando was taken to a forest in the surroundings of Modena. The partisans dug a grave and had him kneel on its edge. While he was praying, the young seminarian was killed by gunshots to the heart and head. His cassock was rolled into a ball, kicked around and then hung as a war trophy in the front door of a house.
He was beatified on October 5, 2013 and his Feast Day is April 13.
Prayer for the Intercession of Blessed Rolando Rivi
O God, merciful Father, who choose the small to confound the powerful of the world, I thank You for having given us, in the seminarian Rolando Rivi, a testimony of total love for Your Son, Jesus, and the Church, unto the sacrifice of his life. Enlightened by this example, and through Rolando’s intercession, I ask You to give me the strength always to be a living sign of Your love in the world, and I beg You to grant me the grace of [here state your petition], which I ardently desire. Amen
