MADAGASCAR MARKS CENTURY OF TRINITARIAN PRESENCE; BISHOP BERARDI RETURNS TO ROOTS OF RELIGIOUS CALLING
Forty years after his first encounter with Spanish missionaries in Madagascar, Monsignor Aldo Berardi is returning to the island this month to mark one hundred years of the Trinitarian Order’s work there. The journey is both a personal pilgrimage and a moment of institutional reflection for an Order that has shaped the Catholic Church’s presence across Madagascar since the early twentieth century.
Berardi currently serves as Apostolic Vicar of Northern Arabia, a jurisdiction encompassing Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Before departing for Madagascar, he stopped at Cerfroid in France, the historic birthplace and mother house of the Trinitarian Order. The timing coincides with his recent celebration of the thirty-fifth anniversary of his priestly ordination, marked on July 26 in the Church of Saint-Martin in Ars-sur-Moselle.
His path to the Order began in the Metz region of France. He grew up there and attended both minor and major seminary at Villiers-lès-Nancy for the Diocese of Metz, entering formation at sixteen along a trajectory that pointed toward diocesan priesthood. What changed that trajectory was a single practical decision: choosing two years of civil service in place of military service.
That choice brought him to Madagascar, where he encountered Spanish Trinitarians engaged in missionary work within the Diocese of Tsiroanomandidy. In an interview with Fides news agency, Berardi described what he found there as transformative. “I was also impressed by the commitment, courage, and sacrifices of the first missionaries, who departed knowing they would probably never return to their country of origin.” The simplicity of Trinitarian spirituality, capable of uniting monastic and apostolic dimensions, drew him in entirely.
The road back to Madagascar has not been straightforward. “The centennial of the Trinitaires’ presence in Madagascar represents for me a particularly significant anniversary,” Berardi told Fides. “I return after forty years. Until now, I had never been able to do so, because each time an obstacle appeared in my path. During the Covid pandemic, I was responsible for formation and had planned to visit our formation houses, but we remained blocked in Rome. When it finally seemed possible to depart, my episcopal appointment arrived. This journey is for me a return to the roots of my vocation.”
His religious formation after Madagascar continued at the major seminary in Montreal, where he spent three years. It was a Malagasy bishop who ultimately ordained him to the priesthood.
The centennial visit will include celebrations with the community, followed by travel to the Tsiroanomandidy region, where Berardi lived during those formative years. Meanwhile, the Trinitarian Order’s footprint on the island has grown considerably since those early missionaries arrived. The Order has established or overseen the foundation of four dioceses across Madagascar: Miarinarivo, Tsiroanomandidy, Ambatondrazaka, and Maintirano. In each jurisdiction, Trinitarian missionary engagement continues to sustain the growth of local church communities.
Berardi’s return raises a question the centennial itself invites: what the next hundred years of that presence will look like, as locally rooted communities carry forward what those first missionaries built. More information about the Trinitarian presence and its historical significance is available at https://www.fides.org/fr/news/78007-LES_TRINITAIRES_A_MADAGASCAR_4_Les_cent_ans_de_l_Ordre_de_la_Tres_Sainte_Trinite_et_de_la_Redemption_des_Captifs_Le_pelerinage_de_Mgr_Berardi_sur_les_traces_de_sa_vocation.