The oldest missionary in northeast India, 98 years old, was born on 21 st May 1918 at Cagliari in Italy. Fr Mario, who spent 75 years in India, was one such “harmless missionary” who became an Indian citizen in 1965, at a time when Indian government was expelling foreign missionaries from the northeastern state of Assam. Fr Mario was then the rector of Don Bosco School in Shillong, a prestigious institution in northeastern India.
A pioneer missionary in the Khasi and Garo Hills of Meghalaya, as well as in the Assam plains and neighboring Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, Fr Mario was a frontier missionary in several parts of the region known as “seven sisters”.
A pioneer of vocational training in Assam, Fr Mario was present last month (30th May 2016) at the inauguration of a 48-year-old vocational/skill training school in Guwahati which geared up to be an electronic manufacturing hub in the gateway city of northeastern India at Maligaon.
Fr Mario established the pioneer manufacturing institution Don Bosco Technical School (DBTS), Maligaon in 1968 as a non formal technical institute managed by Don Bosco Educational Society Guwahati to impart technical education and skilling of the marginalized and poor rural youth including school drop-outs of Assam and adjoining north eastern states of India. The Institution trained some 3,000 marginalized youth just over the last three years and more than 80% of them have been happily placed.
