BIOGRAPHIES

PRESENTATION:

GREAT STIGMATINE BIOGRAPHERS OF ST. GASPAR BERTONI

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Rev. Giuseppe Stofella, CSS [1885 – +1966]

Father Giuseppe Stofella, CSS,  of pious soul and intense inner life, was illuminated by acute intelligence, which he knew how to employ in the historical field, especially in favor of the Cause of our Founding Father. From a young age, he revealed an extraordinary musical talent, with performances and compositions that left his brothers admired. From 1910 to 1914, he was a teacher at the seminary in Belluno; then he returned to our students. With them he went to Rome, in Via del Mascherone. He enrolled in the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, and was counted among the best students. In 1926, at the Stimate, he began those archival researches and those historical studies which substantiate our whole Stigmatine life. His publications have been numerous and dense in content. After 1952 he left Rome, where he had lived for several years, and retired to Verona and Sezano, where the publication of Collectanea Stigmatina, Vita del Fondatore, Epistolario began. He had previously published “Pages of Christian Life”. He died in S. Leonardo, nine years before he could see the most beautiful fruit of his labors: the beatification of Bertoni.

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Rev. Giovanni Ceresatto, CSS [1916 – +2011]

Father Giovanni Ceresatto, CSS  was a great missionary. In 1948 he departed to China, where he served until 1951, when he was expelled for political reasons. In a stop in Bangkok, there came to him the idea of a foundation in Thailand. He developed this idea in St. Agatha, in Rome, when was completing the biography of the Stigmatine Founder (“The Spiritual Profile of St. Gaspar Bertoni”). He departed to Thailand in 1952 with Fr. Primo Carnovali. In Phuket, they built house, church, and school. In Trang, he received an official recognition from the king. There he died, in the vigil of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, that he loved the most.  He was loved and revered by the confreres, particularly for those who he formed in the 15 years he spent in training.

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Rev. Donald Saulnier, CSS [1938 – +1994]
Father Donald Saulnier, CSS  was a great Stigmatine. He was ordained a Stigmatine Priest in 1965. After a brief missionary experience in Thailand, he served as assistant pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Springfield, MA, until 1969. Then he served as Director of the Stigmatine Catholic Center in Sault Ste. in Ontario, Canada. In 1973 he entered as Chaplain of the American Air Corps and remained there until 1985, reaching the title of Major. A serious illness [leukemia] forced him to resign from the military, and then he served as Vocation Director of the Province of the Holy Spouses in Cromwell, CT, until 1994, when his precarious condition of health obliged him to resign. Among other brief works regarding our Stigmatine life, he wrote this beautiful short biography of St. Gaspar Bertoni.

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Venerable Gaspar Bertoni

Biography by Rev. Giuseppe Stofella, CSS  [1951]

English translation by Fr. Joseph Henchey, CSS. Rome, 1966

Original title: Stofella, Giuseppe. Il Venerabile Gaspare Bertoni Fondatore dei Preti della Sacre Stimate di N.S.G.C. Verona, 1951.

Fr. Stofella presents this very detailed and objective biography of the Founder in three periods:

1st Period [1777-1800]: from his birth until his ordination to the Priesthood.

2nd Period [1800-1816]: from his Ordination until the foundation of a Community at the Stimmate – sixteen years of intense study and extremely varied apostolate among the clergy, the laity and the youth.

3rd Period [1816-1853]: From his entrance into the Stimmate until his death, “in the arms of God.” A thirty- seven-year period during which he founded and formed a Congregation of Priests and Brothers at the Stimmate – a period of an even more varied apostolate, during which his years of teaching school, were coupled with extensive counseling, while enduring excruciating suffering, until his death.

Biography of St. Gaspar Bertoni by Rev. Giuseppe Stofella, CSS [1951]. English translation by Rev. Joseph Henchey, CSS [1966].

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The Spiritual Profile of St. Gaspar Bertoni

By Rev. Giovanni Ceresatto, CSS [1991]

English translation by Rev. Joseph Henchey [2005]

Original title: Il Volto e l'Anima. Profilo Spirituale di San Gaspare Bertoni.

Fr. John Ceresatto’s life as an Apostolic Missionary in young Churches – as well as his ‘Popular’ [but well documented] biography of St. Gaspar Bertoni, have both been an inspiration to generations of Stigmatines. After years of service in China, he then went directly to Thailand over 50 years ago – and there he died in 2011, age 95. He was an accomplished linguist and musician. Like St. Gaspar, he was able to use these talents in his Apostolic Mission. He presents Fr. Bertoni as the Apostolic Missionary to the Youth, and then to Religious and Clergy – and, finally, in ‘every Ministry of the Word of God whatsoever’. This Missionary Development was lived in an intensification of St. Gaspar’s mystical graces in his Apostolic Service.

The Spiritual Profile of St. Gaspar Bertoni, by Rev. Giovanni Ceresatto, CSS [1991]. English translation by Rev. Joseph Henchey, CSS [2005].

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Blessed Gaspar Bertoni

In this wonderful short biography, Fr. Saulnier looks at Fr. Bertoni as a man ahead of his time; a man who jumped into the mainstream of the circumstances that enveloped him and worked to bring about positive changes. St. Gaspar was a man who was ‘doer’ in life, not afraid to struggle for his convictions, who believed so strongly in his goals that he sought to overcome all odds to achieve them. He was a man who found himself developing a deep sense of hope, which translated itself into action and a community of men, Priests and Brothers, which would continue to serve God, long after he returned to his Creator.

Blessed Gaspar Bertoni: short biography by Rev. Donald Saulnier, CSS [1987]
Bem-Aventurado Gaspar Bertoni - Portuguese Translation of the Biography of the Founder by Rev. Donald Saulnier, CSS

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