GHELLINI, GELLIO, venerable. — Born on 23 January 1559 at Vicenza, he died there on 29 August 1616. Of noble family, at the age of 15 he was sent to the University of Padua to study philosophy and theology. Inclined toward the religious life, he vowed to enter the Society of Jesus. Since his father opposed his intention and he subsequently suffered serious health problems, he obtained from the Holy See a dispensation from his vow and embarked upon the priesthood as a secular cleric. A member of the Oratory of S. Girolamo and enrolled at the age of 21 among the canons of the Cathedral, he was ordained a priest on 24 September 1583.
In the exercise of his apostolic charity, he turned particularly to women engaged in prostitution, going so far as to pay substantial sums, in order to rescue them from the underworld, to the “unworthy and greedy wolves” who exploited them. He then gathered them in a house, “Il soccorso,” which he had founded and financed, until it might be possible to provide them with a suitable situation either in religious life or in marriage. In 1598 he obtained a degree in theology from the University of Ferrara. He thought that the degree, like the renunciation of his canonry made in 1600, would make him more qualified to found a congregation of secular priests, which he had conceived. In Rome, where he had gone to initiate the implementation of his project, he met Calasanzio and, attracted more by his own zeal than by the invitations of the founder of the Scolopi, devoted himself wholeheartedly, in Rome and Naples, to the apostolic works of that Congregation, so that he abandoned the idea he had cherished. In 1607, yielding to the insistent pressure of his relatives, who had unsuccessfully attempted to persuade him to accept the bishopric of Parenzo, and of the bishop of Vicenza, he returned to his native city. Having refused the canonry again offered to him, he was entrusted with serving as confessor to the nuns of S. Maria Nova. Appointed parish priest of SS. Faustino e Giovita in Vicenza in 1615, he died the following year, worn out by his labors and perhaps infected while assisting plague-stricken soldiers passing through the city. His remains were buried in the church of S. Faustino.
The records of the beatification process are preserved in the archive of the Episcopal Curia, position 1-0578.