• Full name: Francesco Orazio della Penna di Billi. Called Horace in some English-language works. Works by him and about his mission are rather numerous.
• B. at Macerata in 1680 (??), arrived in Tibet from Nepal in 1719. Left Tibet in 1732, returning in 1741. Died at Patan, Nepal on July 20, 1747.
• He was the Prefect of the Capuchin mission that arrived, including 5 other missionaries, in Lhasa in 1741. Their journey lasted 2 years, 4 months and 25 days. Engelhardt, Between, p. 74 ff., p. 79 (list of the other missionaries: Floriano da Jesi, Tranquillo d'Apecchio, Costantino da Loro, Cassiano da Macerata, and Giuseppe Maria da Gargnano). At its height in 1742 the church in Lhasa had nearly 90 regular attendees, including 27 baptised converts.
• Adelhelm Jann, Zur Kulturarbeit der katholischen Kirche in Innerasien. Die missionarische und literarische Tätigkeit des apostolischen Präfekten von Tibet, P. Franciscus Horatius Oliverius della Penna di Billi (1712-1745), contained in: Studien aus dem Gebiete von Kirche und Kulturl Festschrift Gustav Schnürer (Paderborn 1930) 127-207.
• E.H. Parker, The Preaching of the Gospel in Tibet, The China Review, vol. 18, no. 5 (March 1890), pp. 279-284, at p. 280.
• For a listing of his accomplishments, see Pomplun, JRW, p. 154.

Bibliography:

• Francesco Orazio della Penna di Billi, Missio Apostolica, Thibetan-Seraphica: das ist: Neue durch päpstliche Gewalt in dem Grossen Thibetanischen Reich von den P.P. Capucineren aufgerichtete Mission... (Munich 1740).