CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNINO IN FLORENCE
FAther ernesto balducci's places
BIOGRAPHY
FIRST FLORENTINE APOSTOLATE
On July 29, 1944, he left the Roman studentate for the Tuscan province, staying for a few weeks in Siena at the home of the Scolopian community that ran the Pendola Institute for the education of deaf-mutes. On September 3 he was ordained a deacon by Archbishop Mario Toccabelli, and on October 12 he arrived in Florence, settling in the Scolopian institute on Via Cavour, where he took charge of the boarding school. He resumed reading and studying, this time with freedom, drawing extensively on loans from the National Library. In 1945 he sustained his baccalaureate at the Michelangelo High School and enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at the university. On August 26 of that year he received priestly ordination. He celebrated his first mass as a priest precisely in the Church of San Giovannino degli Scolopi in Florence.
CONFLICTS AND DISTANCING
He participated in the conferences for peace and Christian civilization organized from 1952 to 1956 by Giorgio La Pira (who became mayor of Florence in 1951), and his pastoral activity also took place in an increasingly intense relationship with the latter. Balducci's relations with the ecclesiastical hierarchy became increasingly tense after the arrival in Florence in 1954 of Ermenegildo Florit as Elia Dalla Costa's coadjutor bishop. Determining these tensions was, in addition to his group's closeness to La Pira, his adherence to orientations of French Catholicism condemned by the encyclical Humani generis (1950). Shortly thereafter he was forced to leave Tuscany.
THE MASS OF ARTISTS
In 1949 he began an experience that he carried on continuously until 1959: the ‛Mass of artists,' a Eucharistic celebration specifically dedicated to art lovers. The initiative was modeled after one started in Rome in March 1941 by Msgr. Ennio Francia (then a young priest) together with a group of lay artists. Proposing it in Florence were Piero Bargellini and the painter Primo Conti along with, among others, Nicola Lisi, Carlo Betocchi and Giovanni Papini (who suggested to France the name of Balducci as a suitable celebrant for this type of function).
QUOTE
E. Balducci, “The Politics of Faith”
"Christians are not a group unto themselves, because their task is to be within humanity, as a ferment of hope, a possible indication, an incredible anticipation.”
MUST-SEE
Fresco "Apocalisse"
Agostino Veracini, 1665
PICTURES
Chiesa di San Giovannino degli Scolopi
Firenze
Interior of Chiesa di San Giovannino
Firenze
