Zefirino Agostini
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Zefirino Agostini (24 September 1813 - 6 April 1896) was an
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priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in parti ...
that served in his hometown of
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to perform his pastoral duties. He established two religious congregations in his lifetime being the Pious Union of Sisters Devoted to Saint Angela Merici and the Ursuline Sisters of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate. Agostini was beatified on 25 October 1998.


Life

Zefirino Agostini was born in
Verona Verona ( ; ; or ) is a city on the Adige, River Adige in Veneto, Italy, with 255,131 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region, and is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and in Northeast Italy, nor ...
on 24 September 1813 as the oldest son to Antonio Agostini and Angela Frattini. His father died before he reached age one which prompted his mother to care for him and his brothers. He spent his childhood with his paternal grandparents in Terrossa where he learned to read and write. Agostini commenced his studies for the priesthood at the age of eighteen. One of his teachers during his time there was
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Nicola Mazza. He received his
ordination Ordination is the process by which individuals are Consecration in Christianity, consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the religious denomination, denominationa ...
on 11 March 1837 from the
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Giuseppe Grasser. Agostini was appointed in 1845 as the pastor of the parish of Santi Nazario e Celso and took possession of that parish upon his entrance on 29 June 1845. He had been there as a parish priest since 1837 but was elevated as its pastor. He established a range of after-school care programs for girls and also catered for women's religious instruction in his parish. In 1852 he tried to open a centre for adolescents under the care of the
Canossians The Canossians are a family of two Catholic religious institutes and three affiliated lay associations that trace their origin to Magdalen of Canossa, a religious sister canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988. Canossian family Canossian Daughte ...
but it didn't quite work so he tried to look into female oratories as a possible alternative. Agostini also instilled devotion to Saint Angela Merici among his female parishioners and even established a religious congregation devoted to her. The Rule for that order - the Pious Union of Sisters Devoted to Saint Angela Merici - received diocesan approval from the Bishop of Verona Benedetto Riccabona de Reinchenfels in 1856. On 2 November 1856 the priest opened his first school for poor girls. In 1860 some of the workers from that school wanted to form a religious congregation under his direction so he prepared a Rule for them. It resulted in twelve females being professed on 24 September 1869 leading to the establishment of his Ursuline religious institute on 18 November 1869. Zefirino Agostini died on 6 April 1868. His order received diocesan approval from Giordano Corsini on 24 June 1923 while the papal decree of praise of
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was issued on 14 March 1932 and full papal approval for the institute came on 3 April 1940 from
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during
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. The order now operates in places such as
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and
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and as of 2005 has 628 religious in 78 houses.


Beatification

The beatification process commenced on a diocesan level in 1964 - during the pontificate of
Pope Paul VI Pope Paul VI (born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini; 26 September 18976 August 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding John XXII ...
- in which the late priest was granted the title
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as the first stage in the process. The conclusion of the process around the time of the 1980s saw the
Congregation for the Causes of Saints In the Catholic Church, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, previously named the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (), is the dicastery of the Roman Curia that oversees the complex process that leads to the canonization of saints, passi ...
validate the process and approve the fact that it had done what it was tasked to do - collating evidence etc. Historians first needed to assess whether or not there would be obstacles to the cause. The team deemed there were done and so approved the cause to proceed to the next stage on 17 April 1985. The decision allowed for the postulation to submit the
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to the C.C.S. for further assessment and this in turn led to
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declaring Agostini to be
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on 22 January 1991 after ascertaining that he had lived a life of
heroic virtue Heroic virtue is the translation of a phrase coined by Augustine of Hippo to describe the virtue of early Christian martyrs. The phrase is used by the Roman Catholic Church. The Greek pagan term hero described a person with possibly superhuman a ...
. The miracle required for beatification was investigated in the place that it had occurred in and the ensuring process was ratified in
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in mid 1987. John Paul II approved it on 6 April 1998 and beatified Agostini on the following 25 October in
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.


References


External links


Hagiography CircleSaints SQPNSuore Orsoline, Figlie di Maria Immacolata
{{DEFAULTSORT:Agostini, Zefirino 1813 births 1896 deaths 19th-century venerated Christians Beatifications by Pope John Paul II Founders of Catholic religious communities Italian beatified people 19th-century Italian Roman Catholic priests Religious leaders from Verona Venerated Catholics by Pope John Paul II