Father Zanardini, top missionary anthropologist among Indigenous groups, dies in Paraguay at 83

Salesian Father Giuseppe Zanardini, an Italian-born priest and scholar who profoundly shaped the study of Indigenous anthropology in Paraguay, died on Jan. 19 at age 83, the South American country’s Salesian congregation announced.

“Zanardini’s work was fundamental in several areas: in anthropology, linguistics, museology and education,” Bishop Miguel Fritz of the Vicariate of Pilcomayo, a region mostly inhabited by Indigenous groups in Paraguay, who was a longtime friend of Father Zanardini, told OSV News.

Born in Brescia, Italy, in 1942, Father Zanardini studied engineering in Milan, before graduating with degrees in philosophy and theology.

“He was chosen by the Salesians to be sent to Paraguay and decided to study anthropology,” Bishop Fritz said. He completed a doctorate in social anthropology in England.

Father Zanardini arrived in Paraguay in 1978. The first Indigenous nation he lived with was the Ayoreo, in the Gran Chaco region.

“I took a boat that, after three days of travel, brought me to the Paraguay River so I could meet the Ayoreo people. When I arrived, I fell into the river and everyone burst out laughing,” he recalled during a conference about the Pan-Amazon Synod in 2019, in Rome.

The shaman who welcomed Father Zanardini told him: “If you want to stay with us, you must learn many things.” And that’s what the priest did.

“That (advice) has helped me far more than all my studies. From that moment on, I learned to listen to them,” he said.

Decades later, Father Zanardini — known among Indigenous people as Pa’i (Father) José — would publish a book about the Ayoreo culture.

In the Chaco, Pa’i José spent several years in Indigenous villages, promoting social projects, founding schools and launching community radio stations.

He was also a member of the bishops’ conference’s National Coordination for Indigenous Pastoral Ministry, known by the Spanish acronym CONAPI.

With CONAPI, Father Zanardini not only helped Indigenous activists in the struggle for their territories, but also opened the doors for a new pastoral approach in the work with Indigenous populations.

“He was very well-prepared in an intellectual way and was open to the Indigenous cultures and perspectives about God. At first, such an openness even caused a few conflicts with his own congregation,” Bishop Fritz recalled.

Over the years, however, the Church gradually transformed its understanding of the Indigenous spirituality, the bishop said, and Father Zanardini played a central role in that process in Paraguay.

“Things have completely changed. Nowadays, we apply anthropological knowledge to our pastoral work. We not only accept Indigenous culture, we learn from it,” Bishop Fritz described.

The so-called “teología Indígena,” or Indigenous theology, he continued, is an effort to “discover the presence of Jesus incarnated in different cultures.”

Father Zanardini “pointed many paths in that journey,” he added.

Father Zanardini himself said that colonizers used to say that Indigenous people didn’t have God, law and kings.

“Instead, they possess beautiful and important wisdom and are more spiritual than we are,” he said.

Pa’i José also had a prolific academic life. For 22 years, he headed the Anthropological Studies Center at the Catholic University of Asunción. He also taught at the National University of Asunción and at the Higher Institute of Philosophical Studies. Father Zanardini was a member of several academic associations, including the Royal Academy of History of Spain.

He worked with Paraguay’s Ministry of Education on different occasions, always with a focus on Indigenous schools.

Bishop Fritz, who knew Father Zanardini for over 40 years and traveled with him on several occasions to Indigenous villages, was invited to celebrate his funeral Mass, but was in a distant region and couldn’t do it.

“But, on the day of his death, I was able to celebrate a Mass in his honor in an Indigenous community. They prayed a great deal for him,” Bishop Fritz said.

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