BASSI, UGO

BASSI, UGO. – Barnabite, born at Cento on 12 August 1801, died at Bologna on 8 August 1849. Having completed his early studies at Bologna, he entered the Barnabites in 1819. Ordained a priest at Rome, he was sent to teach at Naples, but his fervent and passionate spirit and his natural eloquence led to his being assigned to preaching (1828). Warm in sincere religious feeling, learned, and handsome in appearance, he immediately made a strong impression on his listeners. In 1835, having changed his name from Giuseppe to Ugo, he preached the Lenten sermons at Bologna, arousing public enthusiasm but also the first alarm among the ecclesiastical authorities because of the manifest liberalism of his thought. Ardent and generous, during the cholera epidemic of 1837 the sacred orator became at Palermo a remarkable attendant to the sick and dying. Back again in Bologna, he was suspended from preaching (1840) and forced into temporary exile. He then lived in obscurity for several years at Naples, composing religious and poetic works of little value. At the accession of Pius IX, he became an enthusiastic supporter of the Pontiff’s work and, when war broke out against Austria, joined the Papal forces as a chaplain. Disappointed by the address of 29 April 1848, but always faithful to his ideal of religion and country (B. never repudiated, as others did, his own faith and priestly ministry, nor was he ever enrolled, as it was asserted, in Freemasonry), he used his words to help calm the people of Bologna. Wounded on 12 May at Treviso, as soon as he had recovered he devoted himself, among hospitals and ambulances, at Venice, and took part in the sortie at Mestre. Meanwhile, without his knowledge, he was secularized (29 July). A few months later, at Rome, as Garibaldi’s chaplain and aide, he took part in the defense against the French (by whom he was temporarily taken prisoner on 30 April) and delivered the funeral oration for Manara. After the fall of the republic, he followed Garibaldi, but at Comacchio on 4 August 1849 he was captured by the Austrians together with Captain Livraghi. Four days later, at Bologna, having retracted anything he might have said or done against religion, he was shot, without the knowledge of the higher ecclesiastical authorities or of those same civil authorities of the Papal States.