Born in Nettuno (Rome) on March 21, 1624.
Died in Rome on December 9, 1694.
Educated in the Roman College he entered the Society of Jesus in 1637 and, ordained a priest in 1653, was destined to preaching. He prepared himself for it with an attentive study of the Scriptures and of the Fathers and with the reading of Cicero's Orations. He then preached, from 1661 to 1692, Lentens and missions to the people in most of Italy, enchanting the people and the sovereigns with his heated word and with the fragellations that took place in the pulpit. Above all, the publication of his Quaresimale (Florence 1679) earned him the fame of father of Italian sacred oratory for his rapid, warm, polemical and impetuous eloquence, for the tight and progressive logic of the argumentation and for the classicism of the language and style. In 1692 he was called to the offices of apostolic preacher and penitentiary theologian by Innocent XII.
Don Guanella claims to have received Segneri's Lent, since the days of *college Gallio, "instead of the usual panettone", a Christmas gift from the priest who is a relative of *Gaudenzio Bianchi. A work that then, with reading and assiduous study, became familiar. Some witnesses at the beatification process recall that Don Luigi used another Segnerian work, La manna dell'anima, as a book of meditation and that he also advised his confreres to draw from it passages of Scripture suitable for preaching.
Written:
Sacred panegyrics, Bologna 1664. The educated penitent, Bologna 1669. The educated confessor, Brescia 1672. The manna of the soul, Bologna 1673-1780 (4 volumes). The devotee of the Virgin Mary educated in the ways and means that lead him to serve her, Bologna 1677. The Christian educated in her law, Florence 1686 (3 volumes). The incredulous without excuse, Venice 1690. The educated parish priest, Florence 1692. Sermons said in the Apostolic Palace, Rome, 1694.
Sources:
CELESTINO TESTORE, ad vocem, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. XI, Vatican City, Organization for the Catholic Encyclopedia and for the Catholic Book, 1953, cc. 239-241.
GIUSEPPE MELLINATO, ad vocem, Diccionario Histórico of the Compañía de Jesús, vol. IV, Madrid, Institutum Historicum SI - Universidad Pontificia Comillas 2001, pp. 3547-3548.
Guanellian sources:
LUIGI GUANELLA, The ways of Providence. Autobiographical Memoirs, Rome, New Frontiers, 1988 (popular edition), p.
SACRA RITUUM CONGREGATIONE, Comen. seu Mediolanen. Beatificationis et canonizationis servi Dei Aloysii Guanella [...]. Positio super virtutibus, Summarium, Romae, Typis Guerra et Belli, 1950, pp. 59-60, 376 (texts by Don Giovanni Battista Trussoni and Don Silvio Vannoni).
Photographs:
«Pro Famiglia», 1924, p. 484.