RAMAZZOTTI, ANGELO. - Born in Milan on 3 Aug. 1800, died in Venice on 24 Sept. 1861. Founder of the Institute for Foreign Missions of Milan and Patriarch of Venice.
Having graduated in law at Pavia, after a few years of forensic practice he undertook theological studies and was ordained a priest, passing almost immediately to the Congregation of the Oblate Missionaries of the College of Rho (1829), in order to devote himself to missions to the people and to retreats for the clergy. A peacemaker among the populations of the Lombard villages in the years 1848-49, and founder of charitable works for war orphans, he offered a house of his in Saronno in which to open the Seminary of the Missions of Oceania. Elected Bishop of Pavia on 29 May 1850 and, on 4 Feb. 1858, Patriarch of Venice, he continued his diligent and effective assistance to the missionary Institute he had founded. Indeed, in order to meet a desire expressed to him by the Holy Father, he had presented (1853) the project of a general seminary for the missions consisting of provincial institutes, with their own missions. For all this he did not attend with any less zeal and profit to the pastoral care of his office, in the one and then in the other diocese. Many of his works and initiatives have survived to the present day. In order to ensure regularity in every sector of his governance, he held two synods, one diocesan and the other provincial, which earned him the warmest approval of Rome.
A man of most excellent virtues - not a few considered him a saint - he was designated by Pius IX to receive the cardinal purple in the Consistory of Sept. 1861, but he died in that same month.
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Giovanni B. Tragella