RIP: 10/01/2024 - Videira

Fr. Renato João Simoneto was born on 24 June 1932 in Pinheiro Preto, Santa Catarina. He was the youngest of nine siblings. He went to primary school in Videira at the Immaculate Conception School run by the Salvatorian Sisters. In 1944, he entered the Salvatorian Preparatory Seminary in Videira, where he was admitted to the Gymnasium. The following year he went to Jundiaí, São Paulo, where he studied humanities at the Divine Saviour Minor Seminary in Vila Arens until 1949. On 1 February 1950, he entered the novitiate at the São José Rural Centre, Várzea Paulista, São Paulo. On that occasion he was given the religious name “Frater Mateus”. Concluding the novitiate on 2 February 1952, he made his first religious profession. From 1951 to 1957, he studied Philosophy and Theology at the ‘Salvator Mundi’ Major Seminary in Indianópolis, São Paulo. On 21 September 1957 he was ordained a priest in São Paulo. As a Salvatorian priest, he exercised his entire life ministry as a vicar and parish priest in different parishes staffed by the Salvatorians in Brazil. Fr. Renato also held many and varied roles at the local level within the Salvatorian Province of Brazil. Fr. Renato was known for his responsible way of carrying out his mission and his zeal for the Church. He responded in depth to the questions that were put to him, and he emphasised always his availability as a significant characteristic. In the last period of his life, Fr. Renato shared community life with the confreres of Videira, while lowly his health condition deteriorated. He died on 10 January in the Divine Saviour Hospital, run by the Salvatorian Sisters in the city of Videira. He was 91 years old and had been for 72 years a Salvatorian.