BORN: Pastrengo, VR - 24.02.1944
FINAL PROFESSION: Verona - 25.02.1965
ORDINATION: Pastrengo, VR - 29.06.1969
DECEASED: Poggiomarino, NA - 13.12.2001
AGE: 57
As young student he showed immediately a great interest in the study of physics, chemistry and natural sciences. After his ordination he was sent to the parish of S. Croce in Milan as assistant to the children of the oratory where he used his most beautiful youthful energies.
After having been sent to the Opera Bertoni of Battipaglia as assistant of our students, he spent all the rest of his life in the South of Italy, to which he felt strongly attached. He was superior and bursar in Battipaglia, and was loved very much because of his capacities, in a period that the Apostolic School of Southern Italy was beginning to form the new Stigmatine vocations. From 1980 to 1982 he was parish priest of Montegiordano Marina (Cosenza). Then he went to Bellizzi (Salerno) from 1984 to 1989 as assistant parish priest and afterward as parish priest.
In 1989 he was called to direct the parish of St Mark in Catania: a section of the city filled with problems and challenges that Fr Francesco did not hesitate to face with courage and firmness.
In 1999 he was chosen to be parish priest of Pioggiomarino, in the Vesuvius hinterland, one of the most difficult areas of the neapolitan region. He started organising some interesting initiatives intended to raise the moral and cultural level of the people. Fr Francesco was always a humble and simple person with a child heart: he was surprised and interested in everything and everybody around himself. He died suddenly, during his lunch, caught by a heart attack.
