LANDINI, SILVESTRO

Already a priest, he was accepted by St. Ignatius in 1540, but his very delicate health caused him to be sent back to his homeland, where he devoted himself entirely to popular missions. Recalled by the Saint and assigned to the same ministry, he traveled through cities and countryside: he visited 130 places in the Modenese, more than 150 in Lunigiana, the entire diocese of Spoleto, Ferrara, Reggio Emilia, and much of Tuscany and all of Garfagnana with extraordinary fruit. Appointed by Julius III, at the request of the Genoese “lords of the Office of St. George,” he was sent there (1552) as apostolic visitor and commissioner to restore religion and civil life in Corsica (for 70 years no bishop had been seen there). The extraordinary work he accomplished there, even amid persecutions, dangers, and slanderous denunciations in Rome, did not deter him from his apostolate of peace among families and various towns, the uprooting of the heresy that had infiltrated, and the reform of the clergy, until he was prostrated by the climate, exhaustion, and illness.