Guala, Luigi Maria Fortunato

GUALA, LUIGI MARIA FORTUNATO. - A Piedmontese priest and moralist, born in Turin on 14 Oct. 1775 (St. Augustine's day) to the lawyer Giovanni Giuseppe and Scolastica Gastinelli, and died there on 6 Dec. 1848. He was initiated into works of the apostolate by the servant of God Pio Brunone Lanteri, whose faithful collaborator he became. Ordained a priest on 16 Feb. 1799, a collegiate theologian of the University, he was rector of the Congregation of Artists, erected in the church of St. Francis (1808), and director of one of the "Conferences of Morals" (16 Dec. 1814). The chief merit of this humble priest, of whom few biographical notices have survived, is that he gave a new direction to the formation of the subalpine clergy, both through the founding, in 1817, of the Ecclesiastical College (v.), and through the practice of spiritual exercises according to the Ignatian method (held mainly, also for laypeople, in the sanctuary of St. Ignatius at Lanzo) and the dissemination of the ascetical works of St. Alphonsus and of his moral doctrine.

A man of knowledge and prudence, he was the counselor of the best-known figures of the religious and political world of the subalpine region of the time, and the beneficent friend of the poor, the sick, prisoners and artisans. His most illustrious disciples were St. Joseph Cafasso and St. John Bosco.

A. Pietro Frutaz