SCURATI, GIACOMO

SCURATI, GIACOMO. - Second Superior General of the Institute of Foreign Missions of Milan, born in Milan on Feb. 25, 1831, died there on May 31, 1901.

Ordained a priest in 1854 and professor in the archiepiscopal seminaries

Scovili, he entered the Foreign Missions the following year and left for Hongkong in 1859, working there for a short time because he was chosen as secretary to the Visitor of the Chinese missions, Msgr. Celestino Spelta. Having returned to Italy due to illness at the end of 1862, he was a professor of theology and French in his seminary of the missions, and upon the death of Msgr. Giuseppe Marinoni (v.), in 1891, he succeeded him in the direction of the Institute, which he governed until his death with a keen sense of responsibility.

A good scholar of theological sciences and nourished by profound ascetic doctrine (he was a member of the Theological Faculty of Milan), he has to his credit a very rich production in these two fields, not to mention the many biographies of deceased missionaries of his Institute. Among his works, the book Se sia lecito abbruciare i morti (Milan 1885) achieved a certain resonance; it influenced, if it perhaps did not determine — as it seems — the condemnation of cremation by the Holy Office (May 19, 1886). He was among the first editors of the Osservatore cattolico and for many years oversaw the Italian edition of the Annales de l'oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, on behalf of the Work itself. In 1872 he began the publication of Le Missioni cattoliche, a fortnightly magazine of the same Work, integrating the text with the printing of reports by missionaries of his own and other institutes. In 1874 he founded the S. Giuseppe printing press. Scurati also had good aptitudes for poetry, music, and especially painting, of which he left excellent examples in the illustration of the memoirs of his journey across China, undertaken as Spelta's secretary, which he published anonymously in Le Missioni cattoliche from 1874 to 1877. In 1892, in tribute to the memory of his predecessor, he published his writings. He had also planned a history of the missions of his Institute, but did not have time to carry it out.