BONOMELLI, GEREMIA. - Bishop, b. 12 Sept. 1831 at Nigoline di Franciacorta in the diocese of Brescia, to a very modest peasant family, d. there 3 Aug. 1914. He completed his gymnasium studies at the municipal college of Lovere, then his philosophical and theological studies at the seminary of Brescia, from which he came out a priest on 2 June 1855. His bishop then required him to attend theological studies at the Gregorian University in Rome, and he was a guest of the Capranica College. He then taught sacred sciences in the Brescian seminary, until on 8 July 1866 he made his entry into Lovere as provost. In the care of souls and particularly of the young, in his consideration of the spiritual needs of his mature age, there matured what was to be the constant preoccupation of his life: the good and the glory of the Church in the moral-religious progress of the Italian people. Appointed bishop of Cremona, he was consecrated at Brescia on 26 Nov. 1871 and at once entered his see and then governed it until his death with great zeal and charity.
He had entered it armed with a spirit of convinced intransigence; yet, as a spectator of the sectarian intolerance that raged in those years, he soon had to convince himself of the necessity of establishing good relations with all well-intentioned spirits and of preparing an intelligent rapprochement between science and faith, and in particular between the national spirit that was unifying and the supreme interests of the Apostolic See, overcoming every exclusivism.
As he himself set out in the Memoriale he sent to Pius X in Oct. 1904, this necessity became fully clear to his mind in a meeting that took place in Florence in 1879 with Cardinal Manning, archbishop of Westminster, who admonished him and Archbishop Cecconi, his host: "You Italians must now unite with the House of Savoy, not for the good it has done you (for it has done much harm), but for the much harm that it alone can prevent. Speak no more of temporal power, for which in Europe there is not a single power that will lift a finger: on this let Providence act, and take care not to place the nation at the crossroads of choosing between religion and country: placed in this alternative, it will abandon religion and side with the country, as our England did."
One understands therefore how in 1882, to Leo XIII's request whether he considered the participation of Catholics in political elections opportune or not, he replied in the affirmative, and three years later he presented to the Pontiff, through Father G. Cornoldi of La Civiltà Cattolica, a first memorial, maintaining the impossibility of restoring the ancient domains of the Holy See, and instead the urgency of increasing in the world the moral force of the Holy See, "the true indestructible force of the Papacy," so as to prepare "the material restoration, which may come of itself in those forms that will be possible according to the times." In 1887 he expressed in a letter to his friend Scalabrini, bishop of Piacenza, the intention of publishing a pamphlet "on the terrible Roman question," which "would tend to clarify matters and prepare a solution to the formidable problem." And he concluded: "If this struggle is prolonged further, what sorrowful consequences, which may last—God knows how long! It is urgent to end it, and soon, and I hope that the great Leo XIII, a knower of the times, may be the Callixtus II of the 19th century." He thus expressed the hope that a new Concordat of Worms would put an end to the ongoing struggle between ecclesiastical and civil power. In March 1889 there appeared in the Rassegna nazionale an anonymous writing on Roma e l'Italia e la realtà delle cose, widely circulated also as a separate pamphlet. In this writing, the B., concluding for "an internal impossibility of the re-establishment of the Pope's temporal sovereignty," to which was also added "the external impossibility," proposed "a miniature of a State," a solution to be considered on the level of a modus vivendi, which would temper the harshness of the present condition and halt the spiritual ruins that are accumulating before one's eyes. "These suggestions, however, did not meet with the approval of the Holy See: such a step indeed appeared rather untimely because account had to be taken of the Italian authorities, whose dispositions on the matter were not known, and therefore the possibilities of descending to the practical were doubtful. The writing, by decree of 13 Apr. 1889, was therefore placed on the Index, and the bishop made a public act of submission in the Cathedral on the day of Easter. Meanwhile in Italy socialist ideology was spreading, and the B. immediately showed great interest in the social question, which he treated in various pastoral letters, from that of 1886 on Proprietà e socialismo, to the others Capitale e lavoro (1891), La questione morale è questione sociale (1892), Una parola unica a tutti gli operai (1895), and to that on L'emigrazione (1896). The preoccupation with withdrawing peasants and workers from socialist propaganda and the desire to convince owners to draw closer to the laborers of the land and the workshops in order to raise them morally and materially, and to achieve the establishment of "a quiet, respectful, Christian democracy," rather than a "turbulent, insolent, anti-Christian" one, with the aim "of containing within its dikes this majestic river, which turns its waters toward the sea, so that it may not devastate but fertilize the banks and plains it crosses," this preoccupation is alive and felt in the various pastoral letters of the B., and has a large part in his further episcopal activity. Also in the aforementioned Memoriale of 1904, noting that "the last years saw the vast complex of social problems arise and grow great," he advises Pius X to revoke the non expedit, not so much in order to "seal and perpetuate a determined political arrangement," but in order to "heal and make a people live," in the face of the "menacing growth of the socialist anarchist party," since "this audacious boldness and this real force of the extreme parties threatens religion directly in itself and indirectly in the interests that are most vitally joined to it, such as the family and society." The B. also founded the Opera di assistenza for Italian emigrants, so that these might be assisted spiritually and materially in the places to which they went for work. In this he was assisted by chosen spirits who recognized in him the man superior to every personal or party interest, concerned solely with the good of his fellow men and of his country.
The purity of his intentions was above every suspicion; he appeared at times unprejudiced, and yet he was a man of deep and convinced piety; his character, by nature impulsive and precipitate, led him at times to inopportune and violent outbursts, but he knew how to change his mind; and even in the face of bitter criticisms, insinuations, and misunderstandings kept alive by a press anything but impartial, he knew how to conduct himself with truly episcopal dignity; firm in obedience to his superiors and confident in the support of the admirers and friends whom he had in number and with whom he kept up an active correspondence.
His literary output is abundant and varied; setting aside a Latin manual of dogmatic theology intended for seminaries, it is directed in particular toward providing for the religious needs that were becoming more urgent every day in the various social classes. His major works begin precisely in 1871 with the three volumes: Il giovane studente istruito nella dottrina cristiana (1871-74), which by 1879 were already in their fourth revised edition and which in 1901 received their final revision from the author and continued to be reprinted thereafter. In 1884-91 he published the 18 volumes of the translation of Monsabré's Esposizione del dogma cattolico, enriched with notes by himself. The four volumes on the Misteri cristiani date from 1894-96; the three volumes Seguiamo la ragione from 1894-1900. Alongside these works, which enjoyed wide success and were even translated, came other publications of the same kind and the numerous pastoral letters that dealt with the principal questions of the time and also with the social question. Collections were made of them, such as the two-volume collection of 1897 entitled: Questioni morali e sociali del giorno. He also published speeches, articles in periodicals, conferences, and homilies gathered into volumes (1891-93).
He also published volumes of travel writing, not for purely narrative purposes, but with a religious and moral aim; that is, to interest readers in problems that were either not being addressed or, if they were, were being addressed for entirely different reasons. Un autunno in Oriente dates from 1895 and Un autunno in Occidente from 1897. Then, when he began to concern himself with the assistance of Italian emigrants abroad, he published: Tre mesi al di là delle Alpi (1901), Dal Piccolo S. Bernardo al Brennero (1903), Viaggiando in vari paesi e in vari tempi (1908).