PRATO (a Prato), GIOVANNI. - Priest and journalist, b. at Rovereto on 29 Oct. 1812, d. there on 13 June 1883. A priest in 1835, in 1842 he took up the teaching of religion at the Seminary of Rovereto, a city of which he was elected representative to the Diet of Frankfurt in the spring of 1848. At Frankfurt first and then at Vienna, in the Austrian Parliament, where he sat as a deputy for many years, he constantly advocated the departure of his native region from the German Confederation and the administrative autonomy of the Tyrol.
His parliamentary activity was interrupted in 1875, when the bishop of Trent suspended him a divinis for having cast a favorable vote for the so-called "confessional laws" - subversive of the rights of the Church - which the Austrian Liberal Party had proposed to the Chamber, and the Liberal-National Political Society of the Trentino struck him from its ranks for having, in deference to his bishop, retracted his vote. He then resigned his parliamentary mandate and also abandoned his intense journalistic activity. He had in fact founded Il Giornale del Trentino and subsequently Il Giornale di Rovereto, Il Trentino and Il nuovo giornale del Trentino, always agitating in them the cause of the Italian character of his region: a subject he discussed at length also in numerous Italian periodicals, especially in the Crepuscolo. He also found time and energy for numerous writings of erudition and of various literature: he published an appreciated Studio sullo stato di cultura del Trentino, promoted the celebrations at Trent for the sixth centenary of the birth of the Alighieri, and translated the Geblers' Il processo di Galileo.
Bibliography2 works
Renzo U. Montini