Blessed Giuseppe Tovini

Blessed Giuseppe Antonio Tovini was an Italian lawyer from Brescia, a husband and the father of ten children, and a Franciscan tertiary. He founded Catholic schools, periodicals and banks so that the works of the Church would have independent support and poor people access to credit. The Church commemorates him on January 16.

He was born on March 14, 1841, in Cividate Camuno in the province of Brescia, the eldest of seven children. He studied at the municipal boarding school in Lovere, and when the family ran short of means, he was given a free place at the school for poor boys founded in Verona by Father Nicola Mazza. In 1859 his father died, and the support of his younger brothers and sisters fell to him. He studied law at Padua while working in a law office, and took his degree at Pavia in 1865.

He began his career in Lovere, in a law office and as a teacher at the school there. In 1867 he moved to Brescia, to the office of the lawyer Giordano Corbolani. From 1871 to 1874 he was mayor of his native Cividate and worked for a railway line linking the Val Camonica with Brescia. On January 6, 1875, he married Emilia, Corbolani’s daughter. They had ten children; one of the sons became a priest and two daughters became religious sisters.

In 1878 he helped found in Brescia the daily “Il Cittadino di Brescia” and took charge of the diocesan committee of the Opera dei Congressi, the nationwide organization of Italian Catholics. As a provincial and city councilor he defended the cause of the poorest. He supported rural cooperative banks, in 1888 founded the Banca San Paolo in Brescia, and in 1896 the Banco Ambrosiano in Milan.

Closest to his heart, however, was the school. He used to say, “Our Indies are our schools,” and at one congress he declared: “Without faith our children will never be rich; with faith they will never be poor.” He defended the teaching of religion and freedom of education. In 1882 he founded in Brescia the Saint Joseph kindergarten and a boarding school, and in 1893 the teachers’ journal “Scuola Italiana Moderna” and the weekly “La Voce del Popolo.”

He drew the strength for this work, as John Paul II recalled, from the Eucharist, meditation and devotion to the Blessed Virgin. In poor health for years, he died in Brescia on January 16, 1897, at the age of 55. Toward the end of his life his godson Mosè Tovini, later a priest and beatified in 2006, lived with him and cared for him. In 1922 the body of Giuseppe Tovini was moved to the church of St. Luke in Brescia, where it rests to this day.

John Paul II declared him blessed on September 20, 1998, in the stadium of Brescia, during the Mass that closed the centenary of the birth of Paul VI. He recalled then that the future pope was born in the year of Tovini’s death and had heard of his works from his father and from family friends. He called Tovini a great social apostle who knew how to give hope to those who had no voice.