BALLERINI, RAPFAELE. — Jesuit, writer, born at Medicina (Bologna) on 17 May 1830, died in Rome on 14 January 1907. Having completed his studies at the archiepiscopal seminary of Bologna and at the Borromeo College in Rome, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1847. Ordained a priest at Lyon in 1856 by Cardinal de Bonald, in that same year he began his collaboration with La Civiltà Cattolica, to which he was definitively incorporated as a writer in 1860.
Pius IX entrusted B. with the task of composing the memoirs of the first years of his pontificate, allowing 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 composed on the basis of this precious material and formed several chapters of an extensive volume, subsequently printed but not circulated because of the disturbances of the times, and lost when La Civiltà Cattolica was confiscated in 1870. It was later revised and published in 1909: R. B., Le prime pagine del pontificato di papa Pio IX, Rome 1909. It possesses particular value because Pius IX himself had read the proofs and introduced various corrections. From 1870 to 1887 B. was in Florence, where the periodical’s editorial office 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), whose purpose was to remedy the effects of the law suppressing 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 defence of the rights of the Holy See. A pious man of great learning, he wrote on various subjects, with particular attention to the vicissitudes of the Papacy in the nineteenth century.