BOERO, GIUSEPPE. — Jesuit hagiographer and historian, born at Ventimiglia on 15 August 1814, died at Rome on 8 February 1884. After his theological studies, he was attached to the general curia of his Order as archivist and postulator general, then (1876–83) as assistant for the provinces of Italy. In 1870 he attended the First Vatican Council as theologian to Msgr. Miège, missionary bishop of the United States.
An indefatigable writer, B. made the fullest possible use of the opportunities afforded him by his duties as archivist and postulator. In his no fewer than 84 publications, the style may be somewhat mannered and uniform, and the criticism at times too hasty, but the documentation is firsthand. He first wrote a long series of biographies based on the acts of the beatification proceedings: Vita del ven. p. Bernardino Realino (Rome 1852); Istoria della vita del V. p. Giuseppe M. Pignatelli (there 1856); Vita del p. Pietro Canisio (there 1864), etc. He oversaw the reprinting, with more or less revision, of classic hagiographical works by the Fathers Cepari, Ribadeneira, Bartoli, and Spinola. In his final years (1874–80), he published a series of biographical sketches of the first companions of s. Ignatius: b. Pietro Fabro, Fathers Lainez, Salmerón, Le Jay, Broët, Bobadilla, and Rodríguez. From the archives of the Society, he extracted and brought to light unpublished documents and works by Paolo Segneri, s. B. Realino, and Bartoli. He was also entrusted with the official reprinting of Institutum Societatis Iens (3 vols., Rome 1869–70). B. took part in two major controversies of a historical nature, with apologetic works on behalf of the Society: Sentimenti e fatti del p. Silvestro Pietrasanta in difesa di s. Giuseppe Calasanzio e dell'Ordine delle scuole pie (there 1847, French translation by Father Grandidier), against Canon Timon-David of Marseille; and Osservazioni sopra l'istoria del pontificato di Clemente XIV scritta dal p. A. Theiner, prete dell'Oratorio (Modena 1853; 2nd ed., 2 vols., there 1854).