Justin was born at San Fele, Italy on October 9th. He was taken to Naples when a child by his parents, joined the Vincentians when 18, and was ordained. After helping found a Vincentian house at Monopoly, he served as superior at Lecce and in 1839 was sent as the first prefect and vicar apostolic to the new Catholic mission at Adua, Ethiopia. His efforts to evangelize met with great opposition, but in 1841 he was included in a delegation of Ethiopian prelates to Cairo to request the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria to appoint one of his monks Abuna (patriarch) of the Ethiopian church. In Cairo, the patriarch denounced the presence of Father de Jacobis on the delegation and intrigued to a point one Salama as Abuna. Some of the delegation then accompanied Father de Jacobis to meet the Pope in Rome. On his return, Father de Jacobis founded a college and seminary at Guala, and in 1846 a vicariate apostolic of the Galla was established, with William Massaia as its first bishop. These developments caused Salama to launch an anti-Catholic campaign. The college was closed, Catholicism was proscribed, and bishop Massaia was forced to return to Aidan. In 1848, he secretly consecrated Father de Jacobis, now a fugitive, bishop at Massawa, with authority to administer the sacraments in the Ethiopian rite.
Go here to read the rest.
There’s a lot more to read about St. Justin and his missionary activities in Ethiopia and modern day Eritrea. The website run by the Congregation of the Mission has an extensive description of his travels throughout that region gaining converts despite strong opposition from Eastern Orthodox bishops:
“Some of these newly converted persons, afraid of the excommunication which automatically deprived them of the Orthodox sacraments and church burial, abandoned the Catholic faith and formally returned to the Orthodox Church. In spite of this setback however, the faithful of the newly created Catholic community [in Adwa, Ethiopia] continued to grow steadily. The steady growth of the community was well known to the fanatical Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities.”
St. Justin, pray for us.