Alfredo Cremonesi

Alfredo Cremonesi (15 May 19027 February 1953) was an Italian Roman Catholic priest of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions. He studied in Crema and Milan before setting off from Genoa to Naples and then to the Burmese missions via boat. He pledged that he would never return to the Italian mainland and spent the remainder of his life working with the Burmese people in mountain villages despite the great difficulties he faced. Cremonesi was also a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II after the Japanese occupied the nation.

The Burmese independence reached in 1948 prompted guerrilla conflict which caused great unrest and destruction to the point that Cremonesi and other missionaries were forced into exile so as to remain safe. But he reached out to the guerillas and received their permission to return to the village he worked in. Upon his recuperation he transferred to Milan for education in an institute that the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions managed to prepare new missionaries on 17 September 1922. On 7 May 1953 a P.I.M.E. priest visited Donokù for the identification of his remains which were exhumed for a solemn funeral and burial in Taungngu. His death was announced in Crema in the diocesan paper "Il nuovo Torrazzo" on 14 February 1953 in a piece entitled "Abbiamo un martire". Pope Francis approved the cause on 19 March 2019 which allowed for Cremonesi to be beatified; it was celebrated on 19 October 2019 in Crema with Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu presiding over the celebration on the pope's behalf. The postulator for this cause is Francesca Consolini.