FAÀ DI BRUNO, FRANCESCO. - Priest, b. at Alessandria on 29 March 1885 into the well-known family, d. at Turin on 27 March 1888. A captain and combatant at Novara, he studied mathematics in Paris in order to be tutor to the royal princes: because this prospect vanished or because he had refused a duel, he resigned from the army and, having taken his degree at the Sorbonne, entered the University of Turin in 1857, failing, through Masonic intrigues, to become a full professor.
Still a layman, he wrote or edited ascetical publications (notable is the Manuale del soldato cristiano, Turin 1862, 2nd ed. ibid. 1866) and devoted himself to works of the apostolate as he had seen them done by his master Cauchy, of whom he wrote a biography. He founded (1859) the Opera di S. Zita, still in existence, for domestic servants, pouring all his own resources into it and grafting onto it the institutions he devised, with originality, to meet needs not yet satisfied, such as: an infirmary and convalescent home, residences for elderly ladies of gentle birth and for priests passing through, etc. Among his many other activities mention should be made of the erection of a House for underage girls who had become mothers. Of these works, some of them neither long-lived nor flourishing, there remains the Conservatorio di N. S. del Suffragio e di S. Zita, as the work of St. Zita was called from 1876, which houses the professional Educandato, and the Istituto F. di B. for pupil-teachers; to direct it F. had founded, while still a layman, the Suore Minime di N. S. del Suffragio (1869); and in order to officiate at the church of the same name which he had built, above all in suffrage for the fallen, with an idea new for the time, he took Holy Orders in 1876.
His scientific contributions (the principal one: Théorie des formes binaires, Turin 1876, especially in the German edition, Leipzig 1881) and his not a few inventions were highly appreciated.
The introduction of the cause of beatification is under study at the Congregation of Rites.
Bibliography3 works
Mario Colpo