(ANS – Meruri) – 15 July 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of the Servants of God Fr Rodolfo Lunkenbein, SDB, and Simão Bororo, who were killed at the Salesian mission in Meruri, Mato Grosso (Brazil).
The Salesian Province of Campo Grande has organised a day of thanksgiving and remembrance at the graves of these confreres to thank God for all the blessings received since the day Fr Lunkenbein and Simão sealed and bore witness with their own blood to the covenant made with the Boe Bororo people and with this blessed land of Meruri. Thanks will also be given for the journey undertaken over the years towards the recognition of their martyrdom: the diocesan process initiated on 31 January 2018, concluded and approved by the Holy See in 2020; the preparation and submission of the Positio super Martyrio to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican on 28 November 2024; the favourable assessment of the Positio by the Theological Censors on 20 November 2025. All that remains now is the Ordinary Session of the Cardinals and Bishops.
15 July 2026 will therefore be a day of thanksgiving: for the demarcated land, for the growth and strengthening of the people, for the enduring memory, witness and prophecy that have indelibly marked the history and life of the Bororo people, the Salesian Congregation and the Church in this part of Brazil.
On this day, together with Jesus, the Faithful Witness (Rev 1:5), we celebrate the victory of forgiveness and peace over evil and arrogance, as Pope Francis said during the general audience on 28 June 2017: “For there is indeed Someone among us who is stronger than evil, stronger than the mafias, than dark conspiracies, than those who profit at the expense of the desperate, than those who crush others with tyranny… Someone who has always heeded the voice of Abel’s blood crying out from the earth. Christians must therefore always be found on the ‘other side’ of the world, the side chosen by God: not persecutors, but the persecuted; not arrogant, but meek; not peddlers of empty promises, but submissive to the truth; not impostors, but honest.”
Rodolfo and Simão shine out among these witnesses to the Gospel as signs of hope and seeds of peace.
Rodolfo Lunkenbein was born on 1 April 1939 in Döringstadt, Germany. From his teenage years, reading Salesian publications awakened in him a desire to become a missionary. He was sent to Brazil as a missionary and undertook his practical training period at the Meruri mission in Mato Grosso, where he remained until 1965. He was ordained a priest on 29 June 1969 in Germany, choosing as his motto: “I have come to serve and to lay down my life”. He then returned to Meruri, where he was welcomed with great affection by the Bororo people, who gave him the name “Koge Ekureu” (Golden Fish). In 1972, he helped found the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) and fought to defend indigenous reserves. On 15 July 1976, he was murdered in the courtyard of the Salesian mission.
Simão Bororo, a friend of Father Lunkenbein, was born in Meruri on 27 October 1937 and was baptised on 7 November of the same year. He was a member of the group of Bororo who accompanied missionaries Father Pedro Sbardellotto and Salesian Brother Jorge Wörz to the first mission station amongst the Xavantes, at the Santa Teresina mission, in 1957–58. Between 1962 and 1964, he helped build the first brick houses for the Bororo families of Meruri, becoming a skilled bricklayer and devoting the rest of his life to this trade. He was fatally wounded whilst trying to defend Father Lunkenbein’s life on 15 July 1976. Before he died, he forgave his attackers.
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