LUIGI VITALI. — Priest and writer, b. at Bellano (Como) in 1836, d. at Colico on 6 Nov. 1919.
He celebrated his first Mass on 23 June 1859, on the eve of the Battle of Solferino—as he himself recalls (preface to *Patria e religione*, Milan 1903, p. 11)—and to the reconciliation of faith with patriotism he devoted his entire long career as an orator and writer. A follower of Rosmini’s philosophy, an ideal disciple of Manzoni in literature, he collaborated assiduously with *Il Carroccio* and *Il Conciliatore*, strove to promote clerical culture and the reconciliation between State and Church, published numerous literary and pedagogical works, biographies, and verse, and in the aforementioned volume collected the speeches and funeral orations he delivered, warm with Christian piety and fervent love of country (for the fallen of Dogali, Adua, and China, for King Umberto, for A. Manzoni, for G. Verdi, etc.). Yet the best of himself he gave to the education of the blind, whose Institute in Milan he directed with apostolic charity and profound innovative competence from 1876 until his death, for about forty years. The City of Milan awarded him, for this work, the gold medal of civic merit.