Father Gaetano Nicosia, widely known as Macau’s “Angel of the Lepers” died in Hong Kong on Monday, aged 102, members of the Salesian community confirmed to The Macau Post Daily yesterday.
According to previous local media reports, Fr Nicosia was born in Sicily in 1915. He arrived as a Roman-Catholic missionary in mainland China in 1935 and moved to Macau in 1963 when he began to look after a leprosarium in Ka Ho in Coloane. He founded the Roman-Catholic D. Luis Versiglia School in Ka Ho in 1984.He moved to the St Mary’s Home for the Aged in Aberdeen, Hong Kong, in 2011.
In 2015, when he celebrated his 100th birthday, the local Roman-Catholic Portuguese-language weekly O Clarim (“The Bugle”) quoted him as saying: “Yes, I’m very happy, because God loves me! Please, follow Jesus and follow Don Bosco. But I’m also not so happy, because there are still many millions of young people who don’t know about the love of Jesus, the love of God for them.”
Saint John Bosco (1815-1888), popularly known as Don Bosco, was an Italian Roman Catholic priest, educator, writer and founder of the Salesian community.
Fr Gaetano Nicosia is seen in this undated file photo provided by Caritas Macau.
