SARNELI, MARIA GENNARO, Venerable. – Preacher and ascetical writer, firstborn son of the barons of Ciorani, born in Naples on 12 Sept. 1702, died there on 30 June 1744. After beginning university studies, he became a lawyer. Later, having taken the ecclesiastical habit, he attended the Chinese College founded by M. Ripa. Ordained priest in 1732, he joined the Neapolitan Apostolic Missions and in 1733 entered the Congregation founded at Scala by St ALPHONSUS M. de Liguori, of whom he was an indefatigable disciple. He lived almost always in Naples, devoting himself to the poor of the streets, the sick in hospitals, and the conversion of sinners.
A zealous social restorer, he undertook initiatives amid misunderstandings and sacrifices. He fought against sentimentalism and formalism in Christian life, educating the people in private and public meditation on eternal truths. Continuing the moral reclamation begun by St FRANCIS de Geronimo, he also fought on a juridical basis against unbridled prostitution and prompted the intervention of King Charles of Bourbon, who in 1738 had the sinners gathered into a separate quarter. He was then a pioneer of the anti-blasphemy league, mobilizing bishops and magistrates to uproot insolent language. He accompanied this threefold campaign with preaching and books, among which deserve still to be read Il Mondo santificato (1738), Il Mondo riformato (1739), Il Cristiano santificato (1739), L’Anima illuminata (1740), L’Ecclesiastico santificato (1741), etc. L’Anima desolata (1740) and La Discrezione degli spiriti (1741) are of a mystical character. All his works are collected in a fourteen-volume edition (Naples 1848–51), some of which have been translated into other languages, such as Le glorie e grandezza della divina Madre (ibid. 1739). He is buried in Naples, in the church of S. Antonio a Tarsia. Pius X in 1906 declared the heroicity of his virtues.