Salesian Missionary Who Served in Northeast India Declared Venerable

May 25, 2026: Salesian Father Costantino Vendrame, an Italian missionary who served in northeastern India for nearly three decades, has been declared Venerable by the Catholic Church.

Pope Leo XIV on May 22 authorised the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to promulgate a decree recognising the heroic virtues of Father Vendrame, marking the second stage in the four-phase canonisation process.

Father Pierluigi Cameroni, postulator general for the Causes of Saints of the Salesian Family, described Father Vendrame as a missionary of hope among the people.

“Through personal contact, he conveyed the love of the Lord’s compassionate heart, convinced that ‘the Heart of Christ […] is the living core of the first proclamation,’” Father Cameroni said, according to ANS, the Salesian news service published in Rome.

Born in 1893 in San Martino di Colle Umberto in Italy’s Treviso province, Father Vendrame first joined the Diocese of Ceneda as a seminarian before entering the Salesians four years later with a desire to become a missionary.

He made his first vows in 1914 and perpetual vows in 1920. During World War I, he served as a soldier.

Father Vendrame was ordained a priest on March 15, 1924, in Milan. On October 5 that year, he received the missionary crucifix in the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin before leaving for India.

He arrived in Shillong on December 24, 1924, and later served in Assam, Meghalaya and Tamil Nadu.

Known for travelling on foot to remote villages in northeastern India, Father Vendrame dedicated his ministry to the poor and to preaching the Gospel. According to reports, he was respected not only by Christians but also by people of other faiths, who regarded him as a true man of God.

During World War II, the British colonial authorities imprisoned him because he was Italian. He was first held by the Gurkhas and later detained in Deoli, Rajasthan, and Dehradun, Uttarakhand.

Despite suffering from severe osteoarthritis that caused intense pain, he continued his missionary witness. He was later hospitalised in Dibrugarh, Assam, where he died on January 30, 1957, at the age of 63, on the eve of the feast of St. John Bosco.

By Catholic Connect Reporter