SPORTELLI, CESARE, venerable. - Redemptorist preacher, b. at Mola di Bari on 19 June 1701, d. at Pagani on 19 Apr. 1730. Having become a lawyer at the Neapolitan bar, he was procurator to the prince of Vasto.
Together with his most devout mother, Barbara Pavia, he provided financial assistance to Msgr. T. Falcoia, bishop of Castellamare di Stabia, in bringing the Maestre Pie of S. Lucia Filippini from the Papal States into the Kingdom. In 1732 he joined s. Alfonso M. de' Liguori, who was founding the Redemptorist Missionaries, and remained constantly faithful to him amid the defections and persecutions of those early years.
Ordained a priest in 1737, he zealously devoted himself to the salvation of the most neglected souls in the Irpinian and Salernitan countryside; he also gave himself to preaching to ecclesiastics and cloistered religious, with abundant fruits. As rector and general consultor, he contributed to the construction of the colleges of Pagani and Materdomini. He left more than a hundred letters of predominantly ascetical content, as well as various valuable notes for the early history of the Redemptorists. Despite the efforts of s. Alfonso to obtain the beatification of his heroic disciple, the cause was introduced only in 1891.