NECCHI, LUDOVICO (VICO). – Physician, born in Milan on 19 November 1876, died there on 11 January 1930.
In November 1889, he began attending the second year of the lower secondary school at the Parini Gymnasium, a religiously dangerous environment; but the Jesuit G. Mattiussi remained at his side, serving for more than thirty years as his adviser and spiritual father.
At the “Parini” he met Edoardo Gemelli as a fellow student. Gemelli, converted from atheism and having become a Franciscan, always wanted him at his side as an adviser. Having graduated in medicine and surgery at Pavia in 1902, he attended the University of Berlin in January–April 1904; then, after declining an appointment to a projected chair of anatomy at Freiburg, he devoted most of his time to caring for the sick, particularly in the field of neuropsychiatry, which he had chosen on the advice and encouragement of his friend Fr. A. Gemelli, both in private consultations and at the outpatient clinic of the Institute of S. Vincenzo in Milan for the education of children with psychological abnormalities. In addition to strictly medical means, with exquisite charity, tact, and prudence, he applied a truly supernatural treatment to his nervous patients, awakening in them a sense of the fullest trust in the Providence of God. Thus, healing was often the fruit of conversion, or conversion followed the recovery of physical health.
In his social apostolate, he placed his work in that sphere of activity which extends between and serves as a bridge of union between the ecclesiastical hierarchy and lay society, often hostile and closed to the priest’s work. Living in the world, he became its apostle through action and speech, drawing on his profound philosophical, religious, and medical-scientific preparation. While still a secondary-school student, he founded a Catholic association; at the university, he was president of the S. Severino Boezio Catholic circle. Later, he took part in the country’s administrative life and in the Church’s religious and social activity, from the days of the Christian Democratic Fasci to those of the Unione popolare and finally of Catholic Action; in 1908 he was a municipal councillor in Milan, distinguishing himself through his intelligent and vigorous defense against the Socialist attack on religious instruction in schools; in 1923 he was provincial councillor for Milan’s Fifth District.
He had the joy of seeing the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart arise, of which he was a professor and of which he may rightly be considered a “co-founder,” because of the continuous and valuable work of advising that he carried out on every occasion during the years of its preparation.
On 7 January 1951, the cause of beatification was introduced.