Giuseppe 'Jose' Mongiardino

Giuseppe 'José' Mongiardino was an Italian-Argentine convert, a colporteur of the American Bible Society (ABS), who died in 1879 in Bolivia during an expedition to distribute bibles. According to several stories, Mongiardino had been warned of the danger of venturing into Bolivia, but still he had reached Sucre, where he sold everything he carried. He was threatened by the vicar of Cotagaita, who declared that Mongiardino would not reach the border alive and, indeed, on the way back he was killed. The Church denied permission for his burial in the Cotagaita cemetery, and as a consequence he was buried outside its walls "between a murderer and a suicide" (McLean 1916: 120). It is often mentioned as an antecedent to the Penzotti case (see Francesco Penzotti, qv.], particularly in the Protestant literature. Mongiardino, a recent convert who had made the excursion by choice, without being sent by the ABS, did not excite the same admiration as Penzotti. Penzotti himself, however, visited Mongiardino's grave while he was on a tour with Andrew Murray Milne.

Sources:

• Beach, Harlan P., et. al. (eds), Protestant missions in South America, New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1907, c1900.
• Lamport, Mark (ed.), Encyclopedia of Christianity in the Global South, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018.