VENERABLE ANTONIO DA OLIVADI. - Ascetic preacher and writer, born in 1653 at Olivadi (Catanzaro), entered the Capuchins of the province of Reggio Calabria in 1670, died on 22 February 1720. For more than thirty years he evangelized southern Italy and Sicily, to the enthusiasm of the crowds, who venerated him as a saint.
The preferred theme of his meditations and preaching was the Passion of Jesus; he increased calvaries, churches, altars, and confraternities in honor of the Wounds of Jesus. He published *L’Anno doloroso di Gesù* (Naples 1692, Turin 1923), which comprises 365 meditations, written in only twenty days amid the toils of his apostolate; then *L’Anno doloroso di Maria* (Naples 1698, Bassano 1848). These valuable works enjoyed wide diffusion and numerous editions: more than thirty are known of the first, about fifteen of the second. The cause for his beatification was introduced in 1758.