D'INSENGARD, GIUSEPPE. - Vincentian missionary, apostle of catechism, born to the barons of I. at La Spezia on 25 Sept. 1844, died at Rome on 9 July 1913. Ordained priest on 21 Sept. 1867, he embraced religious life in the Congregation of the Mission on 19 Nov. 1872. From that year until 1901 he taught literature at the Imperial Lercari boarding school in Sarzana. In 1901 he was entrusted with the teaching of moral theology and sacred eloquence at Turin, whence in 1908 he moved to Rome as procurator general of his Community before the Holy See and consultant to the Sacred Congregation of Rites.
His passion for the teaching of catechism organized in the form of a school dated from the first years of his priesthood, and in 1872 he succeeded in having it adopted in the cities of La Spezia, Sarzana, Lerici, and Massa. Thereafter there was no catechetical event in Italy in which he did not take an active part: days, weeks, congresses, above all the first national congress held at Piacenza in 1889 and the second at Milan in 1910. In that same year he assumed the editorship of the periodical Il catechista cattolico, to which he had contributed effectively since 1889. His articles, esteemed and eagerly awaited, often had the character and scope of exhaustive monographs. He also published the volumes: Lezioni ed esempi di un eminente catechista, ossia il Catechismo secondo mons. Dupanloup (Turin, 1891), and Breve cenno di catechetica (Rome, 1910). He was a member of the Commission for the reform of the Breviary under Pius X and played a major part in drafting the official text of the Catechism of that Pontiff.