FRANSONI, LUIGI. — Archbishop of Turin, born on 29 March 1789 in Genoa, died on 26 March 1862 in Lyon. In 1797 he took refuge in Rome. Returning to Genoa in 1814, he donned the ecclesiastical habit and was ordained a priest on 11 December of the same year. He then entered the Congregation of the Urban Missionaries, and was appointed bishop of Fossano by Pius VII on 13 August 1821. Following the death of Mgr. Chiaverotti, in August 1831 he was sent to Turin as apostolic administrator and became archbishop following the Conciatore of 24 February 1832. He was particularly concerned with improving studies in the seminaries and with greater strictness in ecclesiastical discipline. In March 1848, because of hostile demonstrations, he was forced to leave Turin, where he returned in February 1850. To King Vittorio Emanuele II, who had tried to dissuade him from returning, he replied that he could not leave the diocese abandoned any longer without failing in his most imperative duties.
After returning to his see, on the occasion of the promulgation of the Siccardi Law, he issued a circular on 18 April in which, having drawn attention to the fact that civil law could not dispense ecclesiastics from the special obligations imposed upon them by the laws of the Church, he prescribed for parish priests and ecclesiastics in general the conduct to be followed in certain cases. Having learned of these instructions from the archbishop, the Sardinian government ordered F.’s arrest, and he was confined in the citadel. Meanwhile proceedings were instituted against him, and the civil tribunal found him guilty of offending against the laws, sentencing him to one month in prison and a fine of five hundred lire. He left prison on 2 June, but shortly thereafter F. was subjected to much harsher trials. When the minister of agriculture, Pietro Santarosa, who had been one of the leading proponents of the Siccardi Law, became seriously ill, F., having consulted a commission of canonists, consented to the administration of the Last Sacraments only after a public act of recantation. The minister refused, and died without religious consolation.
Two days after Santarosa’s death, on 7 August 1850, the archbishop was taken from his palace by a carabinieri major and brought to the fortress of Fenestrelle. Taking only what was strictly necessary, and accompanied by an ecclesiastic and a servant, the archbishop remained there until 28 September of the same year. Meanwhile the Sardinian government had sent Pier Dionigi Pinelli to Rome in the futile attempt to reach a modus vivendi with the Holy See. To the Piedmontese envoy, who had declared that one of the principal obstacles to an agreement was F.’s person and that it was therefore necessary to transfer the archbishop, Cardinal Antonelli replied that F.’s conduct had been fully consistent with what his ministry required. The government then acted on its own initiative and expelled the prelate from the Kingdom. F. took up residence in Lyon, and remained there, far from his diocese, until his death.