St Francesco Saverio Maria Bianchi

Informazioni Utili Born: 1743 ad Arpino - Death: 1815 a Napoli

He is a Barnabite priest (1743-1815, known as “the Apostle of Naples” because of his intense spiritual engagement in that town. As a man of culture, he undertook important jobs within his Congregation and was a teacher in the Barnabite boarding school in Arpino, in the Collegio S. Carlo in Naples and in 1778 in the University of Naples. He was known for his mercy and his availiability towards people. In time his religious experience set towards mysticim and meditation and gradually gave up teaching. He was the protagonist of divine phenomena: during the Vesuvius eruptions in 1804 and 1805, for example, he stopped the lava flow raising his hand in a blessing gesture. These episodes made him famous as a saint and in 1951 was canonized.

Other important religious people who have shed lustre on Arpino are Ildefonso Rea, a Benedectine abbot in Montecassino since 1945 and advocate of the monastery reconstruction destroyed during the Second World War; father Vincenzo Sangermano (1758-1819), a Barnabite missionary in Burma, was the author of a detailled “Report” on that Asian country and the first rector of the Collegio Tulliano during Murat’s ruling.