lit a candle 13h agoI had just been reading about the old missions in Laos last week, something about Nam Tha, and now this. 94 years old. Didn't expect to feel this struck by someone I only learned about a few days ago.
Their story
Alessandro Staccioli was an Italian Catholic bishop and missionary of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate who led the Apostolic Vicariate of Luang Prabang in northern Laos from 1968 until missionaries were expelled in 1975, and then served as auxiliary bishop of Siena for fifteen years. He died on 4…
Alessandro Staccioli was an Italian Catholic bishop and missionary of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate who led the Apostolic Vicariate of Luang Prabang in northern Laos from 1968 until missionaries were expelled in 1975, and then served as auxiliary bishop of Siena for fifteen years. He died on 4 November 2026 in Battipaglia, in the province of Salerno, at the age of 94.
He was born in Trieste on 13 November 1931 into a family from Siena, and received his first theological formation at the archdiocesan seminary in Siena. He joined the Oblates and was ordained a priest on 17 March 1956. The following year he left for Laos as one of the first Italian missionaries sent to the country, alongside Lionello Berti, who later became a bishop himself.
His first mission was at Nam Tha, where he had to build everything from nothing. In the early 1960s Laos was drawn into the wars of the region. His mission was destroyed, and his fellow Oblate Mario Borzaga, who was later beatified, was killed in 1960. Staccioli himself came close to death more than once. On 26 September 1968 Pope Paul VI named him titular bishop of Taurianum and Vicar Apostolic of Luang Prabang, and he was consecrated on 8 December 1968 by Bishop Etienne Loosdregt. In 1970 he ordained the last ethnic Khmu priest before the Pathet Lao took power, and in 1975 he was expelled along with most foreign clergy.
Back in Italy, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Siena on 29 November 1975 and served under the city's archbishops until 10 December 1990, through the 1986 merger that created the Archdiocese of Siena-Colle di Val d'Elsa-Montalcino. He never let go of Laos. He was secretary of the Pontifical Missionary Union, pontifical delegate for Laotian refugees around the world, and from 1986 to 2006 Apostolic Visitor to Laotian Catholics living abroad. In 2018 he marked fifty years as a bishop with his Oblate community.
In retirement he lived at the Oblate house in San Giorgio Canavese, near Turin. Cardinal Augusto Paolo Lojudice, Archbishop of Siena, announced his death together with his predecessors and the whole archdiocese, recalling his generous and fruitful pastoral service. His body was to be brought to Siena on 8 November 2026 for a funeral in the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Piazza del Duomo, followed by burial in the bishops' crypt of Siena Cathedral.
He is remembered as one of the last links to the Catholic mission in Laos before 1975, and as a familiar pastoral figure in Siena, the city of his family, where he will rest.
Biography adapted from Arcidiocesi di Siena-Colle di Val d'Elsa-Montalcino, Toscana Oggi, Siena News, Canale 3, English and Italian Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“Ego in medio vestrum sum sicut qui ministrat”
Episcopal motto
Photos
1Bishop Alessandro Staccioli in later life
by People Forever
same, the Luang Prabang history pulled me in too