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Biography

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Antonio Maria Gianelli was born on 12 April 1789 in the Ligurian village of Cerreto, then part of the Republic of Genoa, to a family of modest rural means. His parents, Giacomo Gianelli and Maria Angela, raised him in a setting of simple Catholic piety. Early signs of intelligence and vocation, together with the family's limited resources, led local benefactors to support his schooling, first in nearby Chiavari and later in Genoa. He entered the seminary of Genoa during a period when Liguria was passing through the upheavals of the Napoleonic years and the restoration of older ecclesiastical structures. He was ordained a priest on 23 May 1812. In the years that followed he became known as a preacher, catechist, and teacher, combining parish work with the intellectual and spiritual formation of the young and of candidates for the priesthood.

His principal field of priestly labor was Chiavari and its district. There he gained a reputation for pastoral energy, concern for the education of the poor, and care of the sick. In 1829 he founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Garden (Figlie di Maria Santissima dell'Orto), a community of women devoted to the instruction of girls and to charitable and nursing work; the sisters later came to be called Gianelline after their founder. He also promoted a male missionary institute inspired by the example of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, intended for preaching and rural missions, though that foundation did not endure on the same scale as the women's congregation. His combination of administrative ability, preaching, and personal austerity drew the attention of the Holy See. Pope Gregory XVI named him to the see of Bobbio; he became bishop of that diocese in 1838 and remained its ordinary until his death.

Bobbio was a small, historically important Apennine diocese associated with the memory of Saint Columbanus and his abbey. As bishop, Gianelli devoted himself to the visitation of mountain parishes, often under difficult conditions, to the support and reform of the seminary, and to the promotion of catechesis among clergy and laity. He lived simply, sought to restore discipline and pastoral zeal, and continued to take an interest in the religious congregation he had founded in Chiavari. His episcopate lasted only about eight years. Exhausted by travel and pastoral labor and weakened by illness, he died on 7 June 1846 in Piacenza, then in the Duchy of Parma, at the age of fifty-seven.

After his death, devotion to Gianelli took root in Liguria and in the former diocese of Bobbio. The cause for his canonization proceeded in the early twentieth century. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 19 April 1925 and canonized by Pope Pius XII on 21 October 1951. His liturgical feast is kept on 7 June. He is invoked as a patron of the Diocese of Chiavari, in the region of his birth and early ministry, and remains the spiritual father of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Garden, who have continued educational and charitable work in Italy and beyond.

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