Augusto Bertazzoni

Augusto Bertazzoni was born on 10 January 1876 in San Pietro di Legnago, in the province of Verona in the Veneto region of northern Italy, then part of the Kingdom of Italy. He was formed for the priesthood in the Diocese of Verona and was ordained a priest on 25 February 1899. For more than thirty years he served as a diocesan priest in that northern see, in a period that included the social conflicts of late Liberal Italy, the First World War, and the early years of the Fascist regime. He belonged to the secular clergy rather than to a religious order.

On 30 June 1930 Pope Pius XI appointed him Bishop of Potenza e Marsico Nuovo, a diocese in Basilicata in southern Italy. He received episcopal consecration on 15 August 1930 and thereafter governed that see for thirty-six years. His episcopate covered the later Fascist period, the Second World War, the collapse of the monarchy, and the reconstruction years of the Italian Republic. Later notices of his life, written in connection with his cause for canonization, present him as a pastor of simple personal habits who showed particular concern for the poor in a largely rural and economically strained diocese. In 1950 Pope Pius XII granted him the personal title of archbishop, an honorific rank that did not alter the status of his diocese.

Bertazzoni took part in the Second Vatican Council, which met in four sessions between 1962 and 1965. On 30 November 1966, at the age of ninety, he resigned the pastoral government of Potenza e Marsico Nuovo. He remained in the city of Potenza in retirement.

He died in Potenza on 30 August 1972, at the age of ninety-six. A reputation for holiness persisted among clergy and laity of the region, and a cause for beatification was subsequently introduced. On 2 July 1994 Pope John Paul II approved a decree recognizing his heroic virtues and thereby declared him Venerable. He has not been beatified or canonized, and the Catholic Church has not assigned him an official liturgical feast day or a list of patronages.