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Vincent Cimatti was born on July 15, 1879, in Celle, Faenza, Ravenna, Italy, last born of six children to Giacomo Cimatti, a farm worker, and Rosa Pasi, a weaver. After the eldest, Santina, was born, the couple had five sons. Three of the sons, Dominico, Paolo, and Antonio all died in infancy. The last two, Luigi and Vincenzo, survived. In adulthood, Santina became a religious sister, and the two brothers became Salesian missionaries, Luigi as a brother in Latin America, and Vincent as a priest in Japan.
When he was three years old, Vincent’s father died. As the eldest of the children, Santina helped her mother raise her two younger brothers. One of the memories three-year-old Vincent had was catching a glimpse of Father John Bosco in a church where Vincent and his mother were visiting. Little did Vincent know that one day, he would devote his whole life following the path created by the Salesian founder, Saint John Bosco.
When he was seventeen, Vincent entered the Salesian order and was sent to study for the priesthood. In Turin, he received a degree in agriculture, philosophy, and pedagogy (the study of teaching methods). But it was his diploma in music composition from the Parma Conservatorium that gave Vincent the foundation to one day become famous throughout all of Japan.
At the age of 24, Vincent was ordained a priest, and for the next 20 years, he taught at a Salesian school, Valsalice, in Turin. Although Father Vincent did his job well teaching and composing music, his dream was to become a foreign missionary. He frequently asked the head of the rector major, “Find me a place somewhere in the poorest, most difficult, most abandoned mission. I want nothing to do with comfort.”
When he was 46, Father Vincent finally got his wish when he was sent to lead the first group of Salesians to Japan. In this “Land of the Rising Sun,” Father Vincent would spend the rest of his life serving the people of Japan and advancing the Salesian order. Part of the reason he was so successful as a missionary was his kindness and being involved in the lives of those he served. He also made a name for himself, and thus the Salesians and Catholic Christianity in general, through his writings and music. Among his writings included translating the life of St. Dominic Savio into Japanese.
But it was in the field of music that he really shined. On the 260th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Empire, the government invited him to compose a sonata to be broadcast by radio. After it was performed, the leading newspaper in Japan called it “more Japanese than the Japanese.” He also established a youth band that toured the nation.
As the Salesian presence in Japan grew, the Catholic Church created a new vice providence in Japan, and Father Vincent became the superior. In his role, he traveled frequently throughout Japan and opened institutions to serve the poor and abandoned.
In 1935, he became the Prefect Apostolic and in the following years, he founded a “Boys Town” in Tokyo that accommodated 260 orphans and had a primary, secondary, and technical school.
When he was 70, he served as rector for philosophy and theology at Chofu, a suburb of Tokyo, for the next nine years.
Father Vincent died on October 6, 1965, in Tokyo at the age of 86. On December 21,1991, he was proclaimed Venerable in the Catholic Church. Interestingly, his sister Santina, a member of the Hospitaller Sisters of Mercy and known in religious life as Sister Maria Raffaella, was beatified in 1996. Blessed Maria Raffaella’s feast day is June 23.
