BARTOLOMEO FERRARI, Venerable. – Co-founder of the Order of the Barnabites, born in Milan in 1499, died there on 25 November 1544. After a serious and studious youth devoted to works of charity—among which the heroic assistance to the plague-stricken of 1524 stands out—he enrolled with his friend Antonio Morigia in the Sodality of Eternal Wisdom, where around 1530 he met St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria, who was then contemplating the project of uniting priests to revive Christian life, which was languishing in indifference, vice, and threatened by the Protestant revolt.
The shared purpose intimately united the three friends, giving rise to the new Congregation of Regular Clerics, which in 1533 obtained the approval of Clement VII, largely through the efforts of Ferrari, who had a brother at the papal court. Having been ordained a priest, Ferrari devoted himself entirely to the work of reform in Milan and, from 1537 to 1542, in Vicenza and Verona. In 1542, succeeding Morigia in the governance of the Congregation, he consolidated its foundations, especially by attending to the formation of novices and obtaining from Paul III exemption from the ordinary jurisdiction and from Charles V an imperial diploma of protection and immunity. After his death, he—along with Zaccaria and Morigia—received the title of Blessed until the decrees of Urban VIII.