Career
Although he was an Italian, he considered Chile as his second home country because he moved there when he was 19 years old. He was also confessor of Pope John Paul II, a prominent theologian and writer Viganò was the 8th child of Francesco Viganò and Maria Enrichetta Cattaneo from Sondrio, northern Italy.
In 1926 he frequented the official school and inscribed at the Salesian Youth Center, the place that would put him in contact with the Don Bosco"s spirituality.
In 1929, during the beatification of Don Bosco, his mother made a pilgrimage to Turin for the occasion, an event that impressed her very much for the love and affection that people showed to the educator. In 1932 Viganò entered the Salesian aspirantate in Chieri and the Salesian novitiate in Montodine in 1935.
He studied philosophy in Foglizzo until 1939. He applied to the missions abroad and was sent to Chile in 1939, at the age of 19, where he will continue his formation and mission for the following decades, being teacher at the Salesian Aspirantate of Macul and at National Gratitude of Santiago. he finished his theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in 1949.
In 1961 he was sent to make studies in Rome for one year and returned to Chile.
In 1968 he was elected as Provincial of Chile and president of the Chilean Conference of Religious Superiors. He was also invited to participate in the 1968"s Latin American Episcopal Conference in Medellín. During his government, in 1984, Pope John Paul II made blessed Manager
Luis Versiglia and French
Calixto Caravario, martyrs in China. That same year he was reelected Rector Mayor on May 15 and he preached the Spiritual Retreats of the Pope and the Roman Curia.
He was also the that presided over the celebrations of the centenary of the dead of Don Bosco (January 31, 1888). The main event was the visit of Pope John Paul II to Colle Don Bosco, the hill where Don Bosco was born in 1815, declaring the place as the Hill of the Youth Beatitudes.
In 1990 the General Chapter of the Salesians elected Vigano for a third period as That year Pope John Paul II made blessed Filipo Rinaldi.
In 1991 the Pope invited Vigano to the Synod for Latin America in Dominican Republic. In 1993 he opened the Institute for Communication Science of the Pontifical Salesian University. In 1994 the Pope made another Salesian blessed: sister Magdalena Morano.
Egidio Vigano still as when he became sick, supported in the government by his vicar Juan Edmundo Vecchi.
He died on January 23, 1995. He was honored in his adoptive country, Chile.
