Ferrari, Bartolomeo, Venerable

FERRARI, BARTOLOMEO, venerabile. - Cofounder of the Order of the Barnabites, b. in Milan in 1499, d. there on 25 Nov. 1544. After a serious and studious youth devoted to works of charity, among which the heroic assistance to the plague-stricken of 1524 was especially notable, having enrolled together with his friend Antonio Morigia in the Sodality of Eternal Wisdom, he met there around 1530 St. Antonio M. Zaccaria, who was pondering the project of a union of priests who would revive the Christian life languishing in indifference and moral laxity and threatened by the Protestant revolt.

The commonality of their aims intimately united the three friends: thus was born the new Congregation of Clerics Regular, which in 1533 obtained the approval of Clement VII, chiefly through the efforts of F., who had a brother at the papal court. Ordained a priest, F. devoted himself entirely to the work of reform in Milan and, from 1537 to 1542, in Vicenza and Verona. Having succeeded Morigia in 1542 in the government of the Congregation, he consolidated its foundations, above all by attending to the formation of novices and by obtaining from Paul III the exemption of the Ordinary and from Charles V an imperial diploma of protection and immunity. After his death he held, together with Zaccaria and Morigia, the title of blessed until the decrees of Urban VIII.

Umberto M. Fasola