He entered the Society in 1886 and was ordained priest in 1900. In 1905 he was called to join the staff of La Civiltà Cattolica, of which he was also director from 1915 to 1931.
To his work as a writer he brought a rare humanistic formation, a sure orientation in the philosophical and theological fields, a fidelity of interpretation and an untiring firmness in defending the directives of the Holy See, so that both Catholics and non-Catholics looked to him to know, in certain circumstances, what was to be thought and done; and it was rightly said that in the first thirty years of our century he exercised an unquestionable function of leadership, especially in very thorny situations.
Besides the countless articles and reviews he wrote for the periodical, especially against the manifold errors of liberalism, the riddle of Modernism and the ambiguous orientations (Action française) within Catholicism, and in defence against accusations levelled at the Pope, he left the following works: Anselmo d’Aosta arcivescovo di Canterbury e dottore della Chiesa (Florence 1909), L’enciclica Pascendi e il modernismo (Rome 1918), Visione cattolica della guerra (ibid. 1925), a collection of articles sometimes supplemented by passages suppressed by the censor; Lettere e scritti spirituali di s. Luigi Gonzaga (Florence 1927), I Gesuiti dalle origini ai giorni nostri (Rome 1934), Il b. Rocco Gonzales e compagni martiri (ibid. 1934). To these must be added his translation of the great work Storia della Chiesa by Cardinal Hergenröther (8 vols., Florence 1904–14), carried down to 1922.