The Positio had as speaker Fr Szczepan Tadeusz Praśkiewicz, OCD, as Postulator Fr Pierluigi Cameroni, Postulator General of the Causes of the Saints of the Salesian Family, and as Collaborator Dr Matteo Penati. Structural elements of the "Positio" – which presents in an articulated and in-depth way the entire documentary and witness evidence apparatus concerning the virtuous life of the Servant of God – are: a brief presentation by the Relator; the Informatio super virtutibus, that is, the theological part in which the virtuous life of the Servant of God is demonstrated; the two Summariums with the witness and documentary evidence; the Biographia ex Documentis; the Last Sessions and the iconographic apparatus.
After delivery, the Positio will be examined by the Theological Consultants of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Therefore, to be studied by the Cardinals and Bishop are these articulated stages of study and evaluation which will allow the Supreme Pontiff, in the event of a positive outcome, to declare Bishpo Oreste Marengo "Venerable Servant of God". It will then take a miracle attributed to his intercession to open the way to Beatification.
This news has aroused great joy in the Diocese of Alba and in Diano d 'Alba (Cuneo), the birthplace of the Servant of God, where for some years a group of people has been dedicated to promoting the Cause of the Servant of God who stood out for his apostolic zeal as a missionary in North East India.
Oreste Marengo was born on 29 August 1906 in Diano d 'Alba, the son of Lorenzo and Agostina Montaldo, farmers. He had a younger brother, Caesar, and three older brothers: Maria Agnese, who later became Sister of Charity of Santa Maria Antida Thouret; Joseph, who would become a diocesan priest, and Natale.
Attending the village church – whose parish priest, Father Giuseppe Falletti, had been a friend and admirer of St John Bosco – and studying in the school run by the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, little Oreste had contact with the varied Salesian situation which he further understood once he moved to Valdocco, Turin as a thirteen-year-old, to the Salesian high school, meeting the Salesians of the first generation there.
Beginning his novitiate in Foglizzo in 1923, in December of the same year he left with some companions for Assam, in North-East India, where he completed his spiritual and intellectual formation, professing his simple vows on 21 January 1925 and his perpetual vows on 21 January 1928.
While having pastoral experience at the side of his confrere Constantine Vendrame, today a Servant of God, on 24 February 1932 he received the diaconate, and on 2 April of the same year the priesthood. Engaged without sparing himself in the activity of the first evangelisation, in 1936, just 4 years after priestly ordination, he became Master of novices and in 1940, Director of the philosophical student body of the Mission.
In 1951, the new diocese of Dibrugarh, in the State of Manipur, he was appointed its first Bishop by the Holy See. After 28 years, he returned to Italy for the first time and on 27 December 1951 he received episcopal consecration in the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin. In 1962 he returned to Italy for the second time, to participate in the first session of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.
He was Bishop of Dibrugarh until 1964, when the Holy See appointed him ordinary of the new diocese of Tezpur, in the State of Assam, of which he laid the foundations, and in 1969 he handed over his government to a new Indian bishop, given the post-conciliar directives inviting the appointment of locally-born bishops. At the same time, for three years he helped the new bishop in pastoral work, generously serving the faithful.
In 1972 the Holy See entrusted him with the care of the organization of a new diocese, that of Tura, in the state of Meghalaya, bordering Assam. He arrived there on 22 July 1972 and carried out his ministry as Apostolic Administrator until 2 January 1978, when, by then 72, he resigned from the administration of the diocese, remaining there, however, as long as his strength allowed him, as a missionary very committed to pastoral care.
At the behest of the superiors, in 1992 he settled at Bosco Mount, headquarters of the Salesian novitiate in Tura, to be for the indigenous novices what they were for him, in Italy, especially in Valdocco, the first Salesian disciples of Don Bosco.
From 1993 he began to have health problems and was hospitalised several times: he had to undergo a hernia operation, suffered from diabetes and phlebitis, had respiratory and gastric problems. However, he committed much of his time to prayer, preparing for the final meeting with the Lord, which took place in the early afternoon of 30 July 1998.
