On Saturday, June 15, the Archdiocese of Chicago celebrated Pope Leo XIV with a rally and Mass at Rate Field, home of the Chicago White Sox. As part of the celebration, several people reflected on the new pope and shared stories from his past.
Sr. Dianne Bergant, a member of the Sisters of St. Agnes of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, taught the future pope when he was a masters' student at the Chicago Theological Union. Pope Leo XIV enrolled at the school in 1978, a year after his graduation from Villanova University.
But Pope Leo XIV was not the only notable student at the school at the time, said Sister Bergant. After she was asked if she had recognized the potential in the then-Robert Prevost, Sister Bergant brought up the story of another student: Ezechiele Ramin, a Comboni missionary who graduated from Chicago Theological Union in 1979.
"There was another student at (Chicago Theological Union) at the same time, because his picture is in the same book at the same time. He was a Comboni missionary. His name was Ezechiele Ramin," said Bergant.
Ramin, explained the teacher, was murdered in Brazil "because he was working to help the farmers to organize against landowners. And his cause for canonization has begun."
So who was Servant of God Fr. Ezechiele Ramin, MCCJ? And why was the Italian-born priest studying in Chicago?
A missionary from Italy
Ezechiele Ramin was born on February 9, 1953, in Padua, Italy. In 1974, when he was 21 years old, he entered the Comboni Missionaries.
The Comboni Missionaries are an "international Catholic organization dedicated to ministering to the world’s poorest and most abandoned people, often working in unstable political climates, in the midst of extreme poverty," said the organization's website.
Before long, Ramin would be working with people who fit all of those descriptors. But before he professed his final vows on May 15, 1980, and was ordained to the priesthood on Sept. 28, 1980, Ramin was a student at Chicago Theological Union – the same school as the future pope.
Ramin graduated from Chicago Theological Union in 1979 with an M.Div degree. Following his ordination to the priesthood, Ramin was assigned to minister in Naples, but was reassigned to another part of Italy following an earthquake.
On January 20, 1984, Ramin was sent to Cacoal, a municipality in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. He was immediately struck by the plight of the farmers in the area.
He wrote a letter describing the situation, saying the "poor are humiliated" and the native population was being invaded.
“I am on a journey with a faith that creates like the Winter creates Spring. Around me the people are dying while the landowners increase, the poor are humiliated, the police kill the peasants and all the reserves of the Indios are being invaded. Like the Winter, I create Spring. My eyes find it hard to see the history of God here on earth. The Cross is the solidarity of God which assumes the process and its pain, not to make it last forever but to end it. The way he wants to end it is not by force or dominion but the way of love. Christ lived and preached this new dimension. The fear of death did not make him desist from his project of love. Love is stronger than death.”
Martyrdom
Barely a year and a half after his arrival in Brazil, Ramin would be dead.
On July 24, 1985, around noon, Ramin was killed in an ambush on a farm in Brazil. He was shot more than 50 times after previously defusing a standoff between landowners and farmers. Ramin was 32 years old.
"The instigators were wealthy landowners who opposed the peaceful movement for the liberation and reappropriation of lands by simple farmers and the Suruì Indians of the Amazon in the state of Rondonia, promoted by the young missionary," said the Diocese of Padua's website.
Shortly after Ramin's death, the then-Pope John Paul II declared him a "Martyr of Charity."
His cause for canonization is ongoing. On March 25, 2017, the diocesan phase of his cause of beatification concluded.
