FILIPPO TOLLI. — Catholic organizer, one of the most distinguished anti-slavery advocates, born in Rome on 1 September 1843, died there on 17 May 1924.
In 1875 he obtained the chair of Italian at the Apollinare Lyceum and in 1884 was appointed Writer of the Latin Section of the Vatican Library. Meanwhile he devoted himself to journalism, directing in Rome *La Stella* and later the combative *La Frusta*, and contributing to the principal Catholic daily newspapers. In the Catholic movement he displayed tireless dedication. He was president of the Circolo S. Pietro from 1874 to 1888 and subsequently held the presidency of the Superior Council of the Society of Catholic Youth from 1880 to 1889. Under the Opera dei Congressi e Comitati Cattolici (see), in 1893 T. assumed the presidency of the regional committee for Lazio.
A member of the Rome city and provincial councils, for fifteen years he served as vice-president of the Roman Electoral Union and promoted two congresses of Catholic municipal and provincial councillors: in 1907 in Florence and in 1908 in Genoa. He was among the first to initiate events of Catholic interest: the papal jubilee of Pius IX, the Vatican Exposition of 1888, the jubilees of Leo XIII and Pius X, and the centenary commemorations of St Philip Neri and Tasso. In the centenary homage of 1900 to Christ the Redeemer, he served as president of the Committee for monuments on Italy’s highest peaks. In the fiftieth anniversary of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1904) he was president of the Roman Commission, vice-president of the International Marian Congress, and led two national pilgrimages to Lourdes where he presented to the bishop the chapel erected by Italians in the Basilica.
The work with which T.’s name is chiefly associated is anti-slavery. In 1888 he founded in Rome, together with the lawyer Simonetti, an anti-slavery movement. Through unremitting propaganda he united the few existing committees in Italy and established others, giving rise to the Italian Anti-Slavery Society of which he was elected general president in 1892. He held the office without interruption until his death. Such extensive activity rested upon a life of exemplary Catholic piety and the humility of a Franciscan tertiary.