BALLERINI, Raffaele. - Jesuit, writer, born at Medicina (Bologna) on 17 May 1830, died in Rome on 14 January 1907. After completing his studies at the archiepiscopal seminary of Bologna and at the Collegio Borromeo in Rome, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1847. Ordained priest at Lyon in 1856 by Cardinal de Bonald, he began in the same year his collaboration with La Civiltà Cattolica, to which he was definitively attached as a writer in 1860.
Pius IX entrusted B. with the task of compiling the memoirs of the early years of his pontificate, allowing him access to highly secret documents: the articles that appeared in La Civiltà Cattolica under the titles Pio IX and Carlo Alberto and Pio IX, Vittorio Emanuele II and Napoleone III were indeed written on the basis of this valuable material and formed some chapters of a large volume, later printed but not published because of the disturbances of the time and lost in the confiscation of La Civiltà Cattolica in 1870. It was revised later and published in 1909: R. B., Le prime pagine del pontificato di papa Pio IX, Rome 1909. This work has a particular value because Pius IX himself had read the proofs and introduced various corrections. From 1870 to 1887 B. was in Florence, where the direction of the periodical had been transferred. In 1877 he published the article Le vittime occulte della rivoluzione italiana which gave rise to the pious work of the «Obolo per le monache poderi d'Italia» (cf. La Civiltà Cattolica, 1901, IV, pp. 574-81), with the aim of mitigating the effects of the law suppressing religious orders. Returning to Rome, he took a lively interest in the foundation and development of the Circolo di S. Pietro, established to defend the rights of the Holy See. Of pious disposition and great learning, he wrote on various subjects, with particular care for the events of the Papacy in the 19th century.