Born in Brusimpiano (Varese) on May 9, 1655.
Died in Rho (Milan) on November 2, 1727.
After completing his studies in the Ambrosian seminaries he became an oblate of the Saints. Ambrogio and Carlo on 25 July 1679 and was ordained a priest on 22 September 1680. Teacher in the seminaries of Celana, Monza and in the Helvetic College (1679-1686), he was appointed confessor in the major seminary of Milan (1686-1792) and rector of the seminary of Arona (1692-1694), where he supervised the completion of the colossal statue of S. Carlo. He spread the practice of spiritual exercises among the clergy and gave a strong impetus to the missions in the parishes, especially in the small and poor ones. To this end, in 1714 he established in Rho, near the sanctuary of Our Lady of Sorrows, a college of Missionary Oblates which, canonically erected on 4 April 1721, had him as prefect and then as provost for life. Father Martinelli was among the first propagators of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Don Guanella obviously did not know this seventeenth-eighteenth-century Lombard priest, but he nurtured a particular veneration for him. At the beginning of 1898, having gone to Brusimpiano, he visited the birthplace of Father Martinelli and, having found it abandoned and neglected, he hoped for its restoration. In the following September, again out of veneration for the founder of the Missionary Oblates of Rho, Don Guanella worked to repair the parish church of Brusimpiano. Between 1909 and 1912, then, Don Guanella took a keen interest in starting his cause for beatification, spreading his figure, encouraging the oblate Father *Giustino Borgonovo to collect his biographical memoirs and writing to Rome to support the introduction of the cause.
Sources:
GIANFRANCO BARBIERI, ad vocem, Dictionary of the Ambrosian Church, edited by Angelo Majo, vol. IV, Milan, NED, 1990, pp. 2085-2086.
PAOLO CALLIARI, ad vocem, in Dictionary of the institutes of perfection, directed by Guerrino Pelliccia (1962-1968) and by Giancarlo Rocca (1969-2003), vol. V, Rome, Edizioni Paoline, 1978, c. 1025.
CARLO MARCORA, ad vocem, in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol. VIII, Rome, Città Nuova, 1967, cc. 1222-1223.
SACRA RITUUM CONGREGATIONE, Positio super introductione causae et super virtutibus Servi Dei Georgii Mariae Martinelli, Rome, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1958, pp. 474-475.
Guanellian sources:
SACRA RITUUM CONGREGATIONE, Comen. seu Mediolanen. Beatificationis et canonizationis servi Dei Aloysii Guanella [...]. Positio super virtutibus, Summarium, Romae, Typis Guerra et Belli, 1950, p. 664 (witness Don Martino Cugnasca).
Glory of saints, in «La Divina Provvidenza», 1921, p. 131.
GIUSTINO BORGONOVO, D. Luigi Guanella (Personal memories), in «La Divina Provvidenza», 1919, pp. 148-149.
The church of Brusimpiano, in «La Divina Provvidenza», 1898, p. 81.
At Brusimpiano, in «La Divina Provvidenza», 1898, p. 21.
Photographs:
Print of 1731 foreword to the Life of the Servant of God Giorgio Maria Martinelli Oblate Priest of the Congregation of SS. Ambrogio and Carlo, written by Benedetto Mazzoleni, Bergamo, 1731.