SCALABRINI, Giovanni Battista. – Bishop of Piacenza, founder of the Missionaries of St Charles (Scalabriniani) and of the St Raphael Society, born at Fino Mornasco (Como) on 8 July 1839, died at Piacenza on 10 June 1905.
Ordained priest on 30 May 1863, he served as rector of the Seminary of Como from 1867 to 1870. Preconized Bishop of Piacenza in 1875, he renewed the diocese over thirty years of unremitting apostolic labour, distinguishing himself particularly through diocesan synods, eucharistic devotion and the spread of catechetical instruction. His work extended beyond the boundaries of the diocese and gained national and international resonance above all for his clear and precise intervention in the Roman Question (v.) and for his manifold initiatives in the field of assistance to Italian emigrants.
In 1888 he published a pamphlet, *Intransigenti e transtigenti, osservazioni di un vescovo italiano*, which did not bear his name. The publication, already approved by Leo XIII, who had read the proofs, caused a great stir among the intransigents, who attacked it violently in *L’Osservatore Cattolico*, directed by Don Davide Albertario. He had well understood that the reconstruction of the Papal State in the manner and extent it had enjoyed up to 1870 was impossible. On the other hand, he was perfectly aware that the pope could not and should not be placed in the position of a subject. Asserting therefore the possibility of a coexistence of the civil principality of the Pontiff with the unity of Italy, he hoped that Italians, conscious of the strength of the Pontificate and persuaded of their own advantage, would spontaneously restore to the Pontiff that measure of civil principality which would render his condition tolerable.
Equally clear was Monsignor S.’s position on the question of the participation of Italian Catholics in political life. He did not hesitate to call ruinous the formula “neither elected nor electors.” On social matters he upheld a fairer distribution of wealth and the elevation of the working and peasant masses. It was particularly to emigrants from all over Italy that he devoted unremitting work, struck as he was by the wretched and humiliating conditions in which they found themselves (v. DAMIANITI, EMIGRAZIONE).
The practical initiatives of Monsignor S. included, besides the foundation of a religious congregation of missionaries (Missionaries of St Charles [v.]) to provide religious and moral assistance to emigrants, especially in the places where they settled, the establishment of an organization for material and social assistance to emigrants, with the aim of rescuing them from shameful speculations (St Raphael Society); and the creation of offices at disembarkation ports for the placement of emigrants. The works founded by Monsignor S. arose amid innumerable difficulties and spread particularly to the two Americas, which he visited in 1901 and 1904 to inspect and promote them. The Ordinary Process for beatification is already deposited with the Sacred Congregation of Rites.
Although they do not constitute his principal merit, his writings should not be forgotten: *Il Concilio Vaticano* (Como 1873, with four subsequent editions); *Piccolo catechismo proposto agli asili d’infanzia* (1875); *Catechismo cattolico* (1877); *L’emigrazione italiana, considerazioni e proposte* (1888); *Dell’assistenza all’emigrazione nazionale e degli istituti che vi provvedono* (1891); *L’Italia all’estero* (1899).