SPINELLI, FRANCESCO. - Priest, founder of the Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament, born in Milan on 14 April 1853, died at Rivolta d'Adda (diocese of Cremona) on 6 February 1911.
Shortly after being ordained priest in Bergamo (1875), during a journey to Rome, while praying in S. Maria Maggiore, he felt a strong inner impulse to found a Congregation of nuns who would adore the Blessed Sacrament in reparation for the insults to which it was subjected. Having returned to Bergamo, while preaching at S. Gervasio d'Adda, he met the Servant of God Caterina Comensoli, who was already contemplating the same project, and in 1882 he founded the Congregation of Adorers, which, however, was to combine works of apostolate with adoration.
After its first excellent successes, substantial debts, incurred through no moral fault of his own in founding other houses, obliged him in 1889 to separate himself from the Institute and to leave the diocese. Lovingly received by the bishop of Cremona, he was sent as spiritual director to the house he had founded at Rivolta d'Adda, where in 1895 he established a new Congregation of Adorers, entirely separate from that of Bergamo, but retaining the purpose, Rules, and habit of the first foundation. The sufferings and contradictions endured by the Servant attracted upon the new Institute the blessings of heaven, with the ever-increasing establishment of other houses. The cause for the beatification of the Servant was introduced in Rome on 25 January 1952.