BONHOMINI (BONOMI), GIOVANNI FRANCESCO. — Nuncio, bishop of Vercelli, born on 6 December 1536 at Cremona. He completed his first studies in his native city and then attended courses in law at Bologna and Pavia. He was a companion of St. Carlo Borromeo, to whom he was bound by a close friendship, and followed him to Rome when the latter was summoned there by his uncle, Pope Pius IV. He was his collaborator and vicar, and when Cardinal Borromeo withdrew in 1565 to his archbishopric of Milan, B. remained in Rome as his agent. He was soon recalled by his patron, who resigned the abbey of Nonantola in his favor in 1566; in 1567 he wanted him with him on the visitation of the Canton of Ticino, and in 1570 on that of German Switzerland, from which arose the idea of establishing the nunciature in Switzerland, which was subsequently entrusted to B. for the first time. In 1572 B. was appointed bishop of Vercelli, and soon began the reform of his diocese according to the decrees of the Council of Trent. In 1579 he was appointed nuncio in Switzerland for the seven Catholic Cantons, and remained there until 1581, working tirelessly in visiting churches and monasteries for the implementation of the decrees of the Council of Trent and the introduction of various religious Orders. When Gregory XIII suspended the Swiss nunciature, B. returned to his diocese of Vercelli, but only briefly, because on 16 September 1581 he was appointed nuncio in Vienna. Here too he aimed to implement the reform, visited Hungary and Bohemia, and when the Diet of Augsburg opened in 1582, assisted the papal legate Cardinal Madruzzo in defending Catholic interests concerning the archbishopric of Cologne. The dispute concluded with the excommunication imposed by the Pope on the archbishop of Cologne, Gebhard Truchess, who had converted to Protestantism, and with the appointment in his place of the bishop of Liège, Ernest of Bavaria. The Pope then established the nunciature of Cologne, and B. was chosen as nuncio there in 1584. The jurisdiction of the nunciature extended over the three ecclesiastical provinces of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier and other dioceses of western Germany, together with the Belgian regions, and very broad powers were granted to the nuncio. B. reached his new see in 1585, and soon began his visitations and took part in various synods for the reform of the dioceses according to the decrees of the Council of Trent. Death overtook him at Liège on 25 February 1587. His remains rest in the cathedral of Vercelli. In addition to numerous letters, the following works by him are known: Antiquorum
Patrum sermones et epistolae de s. Eusebio episcopo vercellensi et martyre (Milan 1581); Reformationis ecclesiasticae decreta generalia (Vercelli 1579).