Giovanni Battista Bergamo is an Italian priest of the diocese of Kaohsiung, a large port city in the south of the island of Taiwan.
He was born into a Christian family in Venice, the fifth of six children. His father, like his mother, is an architect and also a university professor.
"My vocation was born in my family. My parents belonged to the Neocatechumenal Way and thanks to their witness of Christian life they gave me a great example of faith and evangelization. Like any other child, I attended public school, where I showed interest in various subjects and especially in soccer.
As I grew older, my life was developing normally, according to current patterns, and I thought I was happy: I had a girlfriend with whom I planned our future marriage, I had a good job, and my friends considered me a successful person. However, inside I felt tremendously lonely and unhappy. It was at this moment that the Neocatechumenal Way helped me to find the gratuitous love of God, not because of my merits but because of his goodness. Now I had the joy to do God's will.
So I entered the Redemptoris Mater Seminary for the New Evangelization and was sent to Taiwan. At the age of 26 I had to learn Chinese. As a doctor of philosophy, I had to start from scratch: I could neither speak, read nor write. In spite of the difficulties of this experience, it was very beautiful because of the many people that God put in my way to help me.
In Taiwan, my community is entirely Chinese: young, old and married couples. It is truly beautiful to experience how the Word of God and faith are maintained in spite of being culturally so different.
In addition to training in Chinese, I had the opportunity to travel on missions through the seminary, accompanying priests, catechists and families. I was in Hong Kong and in China, in Ganzhou and Sichuan. There I had the opportunity to see great poverty, but also the love of God and the power of his Word and the Sacraments.
In 2019 I was ordained a priest, in a country where less than 1 % is Catholic. That is why my bishop decided to send me to Rome, to continue my formation so that I can help in the evangelization of China and Taiwan."
