10 Facts About Giacomo Margotti

Giacomo Margotti was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and journalist.

Giacomo Margotti was ordained in March 1846 and assigned to the parish of St Siro in his hometown of San Remo.

Giacomo Margotti preferred to defend Catholic thought with pamphlets in which he did not spare criticism of the ministry and its members.

Giacomo Margotti's polemics caught the attention of Moreno and Audisio, and in 1849 he was offered the job of managing editor of L'Armonia.

Giacomo Margotti's writings combined soundness of philosophy and of theological doctrine with rare purity of style, while his ready ability for reply made him a target of the Sardinian government, which at that moment, in furtherance of its policy of territorial expansion, had entered upon a course of legislation that was hostile to the Catholic Church and at variance with the wishes of a great majority of the people.

Giacomo Margotti was at this time threatened by the secret societies, and to avoid assassins he was forced to say Mass at an early hour in some quiet convent chapel and from there make his way furtively to the office of his paper.

In January 1856 Giacomo Margotti was attacked on the streets of Turin by a club-wielding assailant who only desisted when he thought he had killed the priest.

Giacomo Margotti continued to be the object of attacks and of plots, but nothing intimidated him; his journalistic proficiency was eulogized by the British Review in its August 1865 issue.

Pius IX once said, "Giacomo Margotti never asked me for anything: he was right, for any dignity that I could have conferred upon him would have been inferior to his merits".

Giacomo Margotti died in Turin on 6 May 1887, leaving nearly 100,000 lire for charitable purposes.