BALLERINI, RAFFAELE. - Jesuit, writer, b. at Medicina (Bologna) on 17 May 1830, d. at Rome on 14 Jan. 1907. After completing his studies at the archiepiscopal seminary of Bologna and at the Borromeo College 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 incorporated as a writer in 1860.
Pius IX gave B. the task of drafting the memoirs of the early years of his pontificate, permitting him to consult highly secret documents: the writings that appeared in La Civiltà Cattolica under the titles Pio IX and Carlo Alberto and Pio IX, Vittorio Emanuele II and Napoleone III were in fact drafted on the basis of this precious material and formed some chapters of a large volume, printed later but not circulated because of the troubled times and lost in the confiscation of La Civiltà Cattolica in 1870. It was revised subsequently and published in 1909: R. B., Le prime pagine del pontificato di papa Pio IX, Rome 1909. It has a particular value owing to the fact that Pius IX himself had read its 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 povere d'Italia (cf. La Civiltà Cattolica, 1901, IV, pp. 574-81), with the aim of countering the effects of the law suppressing the religious Orders. Having returned to Rome, he took a keen interest in the foundation and development of the Circolo di S. Pietro, established for the defense of the rights of the Holy See. A man of pious spirit and great learning, he wrote on various subjects, with particular attention to the vicissitudes of the Papacy in the 19th century.
Bibliography2 works
Silvio Furlani