THE VENERABLE DON BOSCO
ing, until today the first ten missionaries have grown into 1,400, and Don Bosco's Institutes cover Chili, Brazil, Paraguay, Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, the Argentine and Patagonia.
Monsignor Fagnano, the first Missionary Companion of Cardinal Cagliero, recently summoned from his earthly labors (September 18, 1916) to his reward exceeding great, christianized and civilized Southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, of which region he was appointed Prefect Apostolic in 1885. "An athlete of body and soul," he was styled. His apostolic zeal knew no bounds; he forsook all the amenities of life, intellectual and social, all the honors that the Republics would have lavished upon him, to give himself to the savage tribes of those cold and inhospitable wilds, whom he converted in thousands. This abject race he so loved that a few years ago he renounced the Episcopal dignity that he might continue to exhaust himself in their service. As a hero of Christian Charity he will ever be remembered; and his name will be recorded even in the civil history of America for the discovery of a lake which the Argentine government in deference to him has named Lake Fagnano.
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