ASPERTI, SAMUELE. - Jesuit spiritual director, born in Gorlago (Bergamo) in 1818, died in Mantua on 20 June 1896.
Ordained a priest in Bergamo, he served for several years as a missionary in England, then worked in the curia of Bergamo.
He entered the Society of Jesus in 1857 and served as spiritual director in the colleges of Padua, Bressanone, Cremona, and in the seminary of Brescia. When the seminary for the missions of Central Africa, established in Verona by Bishop Comboni in 1866, was transformed into a religious missionary congregation (1858), Fr. Asperti played a leading role in its founding and formation: spiritual director and first novice master from 1885 to 1892, he shaped its spirit and wrote its rules, giving it the name "Sons of the Sacred Heart." In 1892 he became its superior but resigned the following year due to illness.