Ludovico da Casoria, Venerable

LUDOVICO DA CASORIA, Venerable. - Franciscan, b. at Casoria (Naples) on 11 March 1814, d. at Posillipo on 30 March 1885. He went to Africa to redeem the Moors, for whom he opened a college. The ingenious phrase is his: "Africa will convert Africa."

In 1859 he founded the Congregation of the Friars of Charity, called Bigi from the color of their habit, to which he added the Bigie Elizabethan Sisters. He created countless works, trusting solely in the help of Providence. He gathered thousands of little beggars in Naples, founded a house with an agricultural school on the Deserto di Sorrento, and a house at Posillipo for old fishermen and scrofulous children.

In 1871 he opened an Institute for the blind and deaf-mutes in Assisi; in Rome a boarding school with the church of the Immaculate Conception. In Florence he built a church dedicated to the Sacred Heart, the first in Italy, with a hospice. He also established an academy, which the most learned men of the time attended and which was admired even by unbelievers. In 1882, on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of the Poverello of Assisi, he offered a dinner to five thousand poor people and erected in Naples, at Posillipo, a monument to St. Francis with the tertiaries Dante, Giotto and Columbus. The cause of beatification was introduced on 13 March 1907.

Angelico Martemucci