BIOGRAPHY

BIRTH

Ernesto Balducci was born on August 6, 1922, in Santa Fiora, on Mount Amiata. He was the eldest son of a humble mining family, which was later joined by his sisters Agnese, Maria, and Beppina. The Balducci family faced significant economic difficulties, and for this reason, Ernesto began working very early. As a child of a poor and harsh Maremma, Balducci’s first teacher was Manfredi, the blacksmith of Santa Fiora, an anarchist and anticlerical, who had him work in his workshop. When Ernesto, at twelve years old, decided to enter the seminary with the Scolopi Fathers, Manfredi warned him: “Watch out, boy, don’t let the priests ruin you.” Those words stayed with him, so much so that thirty years later, Balducci met the old Manfredi, who embraced him and said: “Well done, Ernesto, they didn’t succeed.”

BALDUCCI'S FAMILY

His father Luigi was a miner, and the family lived "on the edge between misery and poverty"; from that environment, which he remembered as marked by great sacrifices and dedication to work and by a faith intertwined with secularism, he drew many of the inspirations for his religiosity and a distinctive style of sobriety and reserve. Additionally, he felt a duty of loyalty to his people and his origins to "give voice" to the struggles and justice demands of the poorest, from the miners of Amiata to the marginalized in the city and the Third World.

THE CIRCLE THAT CLOSES

Balducci's autobiographical interview, reflecting the sense of circularity evoked by the title, both begins and ends with a reflection on the place of his origins. Despite having gained fame and authority over his lifetime, and despite being considered today one of the leading figures of the twentieth century, every time he returned home he became once again an ordinary villager and was received by everyone as such.

BALDUCCI'S QUOTE

E. Balducci, “The Circle That Closes”

“I have often wondered what would have become of me if I had been born in a noisy, illuminated city, in a quiet bourgeois family. But I was born in the silence of a medieval village, on the slopes of an extinct volcano, and in a human setting where it was difficult to discern the boundary between reality and fairy tale. I grew up enveloped in a silence that frightened me and accustomed me to contact with the mysterious. Was it a grace? Was it a random circumstance that conditioned my freedom forever? These questions fade into silence, which is the right place for them.”

MUST-SEE

HIS BIRTHPLACE

The connection to his small hometown remained very strong for Balducci, to the point where he himself said he did not know how his life would have been had he been born elsewhere. Balducci was well aware that growing up in an environment of uncertainty, on the fringes of poverty, in that small mining village, had given him a social awareness that he could never have gained elsewhere.

HIS TOMB

After the funeral vigil at the Badia Fiesolana and the liturgy held at the Institute of the Scolopi Fathers in Florence, Balducci was buried in the cemetery of Santa Fiora. The body, temporarily interred on April 28 in the Balducci family chapel, was later given a permanent resting place in a tomb designed by the Michelucci Foundation, with contributions from the Balducci Foundation and the municipal administration of Santa Fiora.

GALLERY

DISCOVER THE OTHER "LUOGHI PARLANTI" ON THIS ITINERARY: