SEMERIA, GIOVANNI. - Barnabite orator and writer, b. at Coldirodi (Imperia) on 26 Sept. 1867, d. at Sparanise (Caserta) on 15 March 1931. At the age of 15 he entered the Barnabite novitiate at Monza. In Rome, having completed his philosophical and theological studies at S. Apollinare and at the Athenaeum of Propaganda Fide, and having been ordained a priest on 5 Apr. 1890, in 1892 he obtained his degree in letters at the University of the Sapienza; then in 1897, at Turin, that in philosophy. Among the pupils of the oratory of the Sacred Heart, of Fr. Baravelli, and then among the workers, the boys and the destitute of the Verano district were his first apostolic labors.
Meanwhile he frequented Giulio Salvadori's Sunday cenacle and was already publishing historical essays and essays on theology and biblical criticism; and with Fr. Savi he began the series of his brilliant lectures in the hall of S. Carlo ai Catinari. In 1892, at the wish of Leo XIII, he took part, at Genoa, in the Catholic Congress of Social Studies. In Sept. 1895
1. A Levite of the time of David (1 Chron. 15:8, 11).
2. A son of Obed-edom of the family of Korah (ibid. 26:4).
3. A prophet in the time of Rehoboam, who in the name of God forbids the king to wage war against the rebellious tribes of the north (1 Kings 12:22-24). The same prophet foretells the victory of Pharaoh Shishak (2 Chron. 12:5 ff.).
4. A pseudoprophet contemporary with Jeremiah, who fomented false hopes both in Babylon and in Jerusalem. Ge-
from Rome he was sent to Genoa as vice-rector and professor of the Institute "Vittorino da Feltre," and for 17 years he was its soul. From 1904 he was also there director of the S. Alessandro Sauli youth circle, where already in Nov. 1897 he had established, with Fr. Ghignoni, the Higher School of Religion for the study and dissemination of Christian history and thought. At the same time, in the church of the Vigne, he held those regular courses of Sunday homilies which for 11 years drew all cultured Genoa from Advent until Lent, when he would leave for the Lenten series in the principal cities of Italy.
In those years he took an active part in the fervent movement of ideas and of religious and moral studies centered on Christian Democracy; with that sincere love of truth, that clarity of exposition and that inexhaustible geniality of thought all his own, which made crowds of young people flock around him. His natural goodness and his candid "indulgent optimism about men and facts and things" (Filippo Meda) led him to approach even men of a different confession and to take an interest in ideas and to study "errors which - he would later affirm, in the noted letter to Fr. Gemelli (Epilogo di una controversia, 1919) - I do not think I ever had the express intention of professing, but toward which I was able to yield, slipping, in days of easy enthusiasm, through a shifting of gentleness, from the erring to their errors, with danger and harm to some reader too trusting and not cautious enough." Accused of modernism, he was assigned by his superiors to Brussels, in Apr. 1912, where he was benevolently received by Card. Mercier. Today, the orthodox intentions of S. are evident, both from the whole of his work and of his entire life, and from S.'s own explicit profession. In 1913 he made a journey to Greece and to the Holy Land. Then, on 1 July 1914, two days before the German invasion of Belgium, he passed into Switzerland, to the Opera Bonomelli at Geneva, where he resumed preaching in Italian for Italian workers and began a course of weekly Dante lectures. In the summer of 1915 Gen. Cadorna summoned him to Udine as chaplain of the Supreme Command: in reality he seemed to be chaplain of the entire army. Tireless in the trenches, hospitals, concentration camps and rear areas, he became very popular among officers and soldiers; until the night of Christmas 1918, when in the cathedral of Trieste he intoned the Te Deum of peace. Immediately afterwards, with Fr. Giovanni Minozzi, he founded the Opera naz. del Mezzogiorno d'Italia for the war orphans of southern Italy. On 5 and 8 March 1931 he gave his last lectures in Genoa and at Montecassino. On 15 March death took him among his orphan girls of Sparanise (Caserta).
Today the Opera naz. del Mezzogiorno, entrusted to Fr. Giovanni Minozzi and to the Pia Società dei discepoli, has 25 orphanages, 76 nurseries and workshops, 5 mountain and seaside colonies, a shelter home for the elderly, 2 female teacher-training schools.
In the Scuola di religione and in the church of the Vigne in Genoa the S. wrote the books with which he placed himself at the head of the scientific-religious renewal in Italy: Venticinque anni di storia del cristianesimo nascente (Rome 1900); Il primo sangue cristiano (ibid. 1901); Dogma, gerarchia e culto nella Chiesa primitiva (ibid. 1902); Scienza e Fede e il loro preteso conflitto (ibid. 1903); Gl'inni della Chiesa (ibid. 1903; reprinted in 1926, under the title: Poesia divina); L'eredità del secolo (ibid. 1900); Il pensiero di s. Paolo nella lettera ai Romani (ibid. 1903); Le vie della Fede: Contributi apologetici (ibid. 1903); La Messa nella sua storia e nei suoi simboli (ibid. 1903) and then many pamphlets, with lectures, panegyrics, commemorations: and articles in scholarly journals and various daily newspapers.
After the war, although his activity was carried on almost exclusively in charitable works, and in an endless number of lectures and speeches on behalf of his orphans, and in the compilation of his monthly magazine Mater Divinae Providentiae: Mater orphanorum, he did not neglect his autobiographical volumes: Memorie di guerra (1924) and Nuove memorie di guerra (1928), I miei ricordi oratori (1927) and I miei tempi (1927), I miei quattro Papi (Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Benedict XV), in two small volumes (1930) and a third, posthumous, on Benedict XV.
Under the care of the Opera naz. del Mezzogiorno the following have been collected in small volumes: I Vangeli delle Domeniche, Le Epistole delle Domeniche, Le Beatitudini, La Famiglia, and other minor works; under the care of the Confratelli, the Pater noster, Maria ideale di virtù, La morale e le morali, La Messa (3rd ed.). There remain in manuscript the apologetics courses of the Scuola di religione from 1903 to 1912 and almost all the sermons, among them the famous Quaresimale di S. Lorenzo in Damaso, of 1897.
In the history of the Church in Italy the S., more than an original thinker, remains as a most prolific and clear animator and popularizer of Christian thought and history, a fascinating and brilliant lecturer and orator and above all an apostle of charity.
Bibliography5 works
Virginio M. Colciago