SIMONI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. – Carthusian ascetical writer, born at Rovigo on 8 December 1887, died at Florence on 14 November 1942. Ordained a priest at Padua on 27 July 1911, he shortly thereafter entered the Carthusian Order.
He served as coadjutor at the charterhouse of Vedana and as prior (1933–38) of that at Calci near Pisa. He devoted his life to the sanctification of the clergy, especially through devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of which he was perhaps the greatest and most convinced apostle in the first half of the twentieth century.
In dealing with this devotion, he sometimes treated its supposed opponents with excessive severity, branding them all as Jansenists, and exaggerated their number in a work entitled Non praevalebunt (Padua 1932), perhaps the least successful of his publications. His other works, however, enjoyed great success: Adveniat regnum tuum (Turin 1924); Si scirea donum Dei (5th ed., Padua 1928); Oportet illum regnare (Monza 1928); Resurget frater tuus (there 1929); Manete in dilectione mea (8th ed., Padua 1944), translated into many languages and reprinted about forty times; Monita salutis (Trent 1943). He also wrote various other pamphlets and many articles for journals, especially Vita cristiana, under the pseudonym Giovanni Senzaterra.