Birth: 09-08-1939
Home Calling : 09-03-2021
Native Place : Villaverla
Country: Italy
Place of Vision: Mozambique
Giocondo Pendin was an Italian missionary who served as a missionary in Mozambique. He came from a God-fearing family of eight children and all of them grew up to do ministry in different capacities. After completing his middle school studies, he entered Florence monastery in 1955 and began his training for monkhood. During this time, the word of God strongly visited him. He realized that he cannot be a child of God by ancestral godliness but only by repenting of his sins. He was born again in 1957.
He then went to Rome for pursuing his theological studies. There he contracted a lung disease and that forced him to stay away from ministry for five years. As soon as he started recovering, he went to Como and began ministering at a seminary. Then the Lord opened doors to work in Mozambique. He arrived in Nampula in 1972 and began ministering in Mueria, Cabaceira, Namahaca, Lurio and Carapira.
Then, Mozambique was a Portuguese colony and the country was fighting for independence. Pendin ministered through intense war times and experienced the sufferings of the war. One evening when he finished the meeting, a few people entered the chapel and shot him in the neck. As he lay on the floor bleeding, those people looted the church and left thinking him to be dead. But Pendin survived! Although he became paralyzed for some time, he returned to the ministry as soon as he began to walk.
Now that he couldn’t do the active itinerant ministry, he took up pastoral work in Beira in 1988. He also began translating the Bible into the local language Cindau and finished it in five years. He had a sharp, creative, and perspicacious mind, and with his sense of humor, he made difficult decisions easy. Despite his paralysis and recurring lung diseases, he never wanted to leave Mozambique. After a ministry of over 50 years, he went to be with the Lord in 2021 due to the Covid-19.
