Venerable Francesco Convertini

Francesco Convertini, SDB (29 August 1898 – 11 February 1976) was an Italian Catholic priest and member of the Salesians of Don Bosco. He served in the missions in India since arriving there in the mid-1920s and dedicated his apostolate to tending to children suffering from malnutrition and fostering interreligious dialogue and tolerance. He also dedicated himself to preserving the environmental protection of local communities in waste-ridden areas and travelled to various communities to bring forth the Gospel message to all people. The process for the late priest's beatification launched in the Krishnagar diocese in the late 1990s and he became titled as a Servant of God; he was later titled as Venerable in 2017 after Pope Francis confirmed that Convertini had practiced heroic virtue throughout his life. Francesco Convertini was born in Marinelli near Cisternino in the Brindisi province on 29 August 1898 as the second of two children to a poor family: His parents were Sante Convertini (who died when he was three months old) and Caterina (who died when he was eleven). His mother provided for his religious upbringing in his childhood. He and his elder brother Samuele (who was thirteen when their mother died) were orphaned and sent to the friars to be paired with foster parents; the couple Vito and Anna Petruzzi from Fasano adopted them and treated the two as their own, so that the two would refer to them as "mother" and "father" due to the connection the four formed with each other. His brother emigrated to the United States of America around 1918. He served in the Italian Armed Forces in World War I from January 1917, after being conscripted to the 124th Chieti Regiment. He served with on the frontlines in Trento from May 1917; on 23 December he was wounded and captured by the Austrian forces and held as a prisoner of war at a camp in Poland for the next eleven months.