Faccin Lino

Father Lino Faccin, from Vicenza, born in 1964, the fourth of seven siblings. A missionary priest of Operazione Mato Grosso in Peru.

His life has been marked by the premature deaths of his father, who died of a heart attack, and of three brothers who were affected by leukemia—one of whom was a priest of OMG in Ecuador. Probably also driven by these events, in 1993, at the age of 29, he accepted the invitation to leave for Peru as a volunteer with OMG. From the very beginning, Father Ugo De Censi (the founder of OMG) asked him to take on a demanding commitment: to open a new mission in Vilcabamba, a legendary place in the history of the Incas and the subsequent Spanish conquest, located in one of the most remote and fascinating valleys of southern Peru, between the Andes mountain range and the Amazon rainforest.

In these distant and challenging places, during a period when the entire area was under the control of the Shining Path terrorists, Lino built and inaugurated a vocational school (“taller”) for woodworking, inspired by the works of Don Bosco. He began to gather young people from the extremely poor surrounding villages, helped by other volunteers who followed him from Italy, particularly from his hometown of Vicenza. He built and inaugurated houses, an oratory, and a cooperative for girls. He also activated an impressive network of relationships and assistance for the most remote and poorest families in the area.

Encouraged by Father Ugo, in 1995 (at the age of 31) he chose to become a priest and began studies in philosophy and theology in Puerto Maldonado (Peru), later completing them at the seminary in Vicenza. He returned to Peru in 1999 as a deacon and was ordained a priest in March 2000 in Vilcabamba. In the same period, his brother Mario was also ordained a priest in Portoviejo, Ecuador.

After his brother’s death in 2002, Father Lino continued his mission and took on the responsibility of evangelizing the vast parish of Vilcabamba, where he had already served as a lay volunteer. It is an immense parish (as large as several Italian provinces), encompassing peaks over 5,000 meters high and deep gorges in the Amazon rainforest at an altitude of 500 meters. To visit some of the most remote villages, he is often forced to endure hours of off-road travel on extremely difficult roads, followed by equally long walks.

Today, he accompanies and supports various schools and boarding institutions with the goal of instilling in the hearts of many boys and girls a great love for God, for their land, and for their people.