FRANCO, GIOVANNI GIUSEPPE. — Jesuit, brother and confrère of Fr. Secondo, a very well-known preacher, born in Turin on 26 January 1824, died in Rome on 15 January 1908. He was received into the Society on 9 August 1838 and ordained a priest at Vercelli on 4 June 1848.
The dispersion of the Jesuits following the uprisings of that year gave him the opportunity, while travelling extensively throughout France and Belgium, to perfect his theological training at Loranzo, his botanical training in Paris, and to develop there a solid culture in the most diverse fields. He returned to Italy in 1851, and between 1857 and 1863 preached missions in Tuscany and spent a long period in Corsica, while his reputation as a polished and effective writer was increasingly established through appreciated narrative essays of a historical, pedagogical, and moral character.
On 2 November 1863 he joined the editorial staff of La Civiltà Cattolica, to which, together with his priestly ministry, he devoted all the best of himself, not only through numerous articles and reviews, but also through novels and tales, drawn for the most part from historical events, including contemporary ones; gripping plots, subtle analysis, and instructive information, although at times prolix and digressive: Tigranate (2 vols., Rome 1883); Le vie del cuore (2 vols., Modena 1889); Le gemelle africane (2 vols., ibid. 1892); Gli spiriti delle tenebre (ibid. 1892); La sposa della Sila (ibid. 1893). In particular, I Crociati di S. Pietro (1868) should be recalled; they subsequently appeared in three volumes (Rome 1869–70) and were also widely translated and published abroad. The work constitutes a valuable historical source for the events of October–November 1867. The author, in fact, besides making use of an abundant bibliography representing every tendency, also had the opportunity to draw freely, with scrupulous objectivity, on the correspondence of the pontifical government placed at his disposal by Pius IX. At whose behest F. also carried out delicate assignments on the occasion of the First Vatican Council and contributed to the publication of the Summa Conciliorum brevissima by the secretary of the Council, Msgr. Fessler.