Venerable Giovanni Battista Quilici

Giovanni Battista Quilici (26 April 1791 – 10 June 1844) was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Daughters of the Crucified as well as several other religious institutions. The priest originated from Livorno where he served as a parish priest for several decades in addition to his role as a caregiver for prostitutes and ill people – he distinguished himself during an 1835 cholera epidemic that claimed his sister. He had the esteem of other noted individuals including Grand Duke Leopoldo II and Juliette Colbert. The beatification process commenced under Pope John Paul II in 1994 after he was titled as a Servant of God and the process culminated on 3 March 2016 after Pope Francis confirmed his life of heroic virtue and titled him as Venerable. Giovanni Battista Quilici was born in Livorno on 26 April 1791 to Bernardo Quilici and Chiara Sgallini; he was baptized on 27 April at the San Francesco Cattedrale and he later received his Confirmation in 1798. The Barnabites from the church of San Sebastiano and the Dominicans from the church of Santa Caterina oversaw his education in his childhood and adolescence. In 1811 he and his close friend Pietro Paolo Stefanini decided to become postulants in the Dominicans but the subsequent suppression of the Dominicans – due to Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of the Italian peninsula – interrupted their plans to join and to enter the priesthood. His father died in 1811. He was ordained as a priest on 13 April 1816 – Holy Saturday. Quilici served as an assistant pastor at San Sebastiano for two decades. In his ecclesiastical career he decided to dedicate himself to the social and moral outcasts of Livorno and this included people such as prisoners and prostitutes. He founded the Evangelical Workers and the Fathers of Families in 1820 as a means to instruct the faithful in catechism while also tending to the sick and instructing children in religious education.