Primo Mazzolari, best known as don Primo, was an Italian priest of the Catholic Church. He was also a partisan and writer who established the review Adesso in 1949. Known as the priest of Bozzolo, he was one of the most striking people of Italian Catholicism in the first part of the 20th century. His thoughts anticipated some of the orientations of the Second Vatican Council, especially about the "Church of the Poor", religious freedom, and pluralism. From the start of the 1950s, don Primo developed a social doctrine with a close empathy towards the disadvantaged and pacifism, which earned him criticism and sanctions from the ecclesiastical authorities and led him to be marginalized in his own parish of Bozzolo. In 1955, with the anonymous publication of Tu non-uccidere, don Primo attacked the doctrine of just war and the ideology of victory, in the name of nonviolence, to support a Movement "... of Christian resistance against war..." and for justice and peace. It was only at the end of 1950s, in the last months of his life, that don Primo began to receive the first approval of the ecclesiastical authorities. In November 1957, the archbishop of Milan Montini, future pope Paul VI, called on him to preach in his diocese. In February 1959, pope John XXIII received him in a private audience and publicly called him "Tromba dello spirito santo nella Bassa Padana". Pope Francis visited Bozzolo and gave a speech and prayed at his tomb, meeting with members of Fondazione Mazzolari and its President, and a scientist who is a professor and member of the Fondazione Mazzolari, as part of a one-day helicopter pilgrimage in Italy, on 20 June 2017, to Bozzolo, and to BarbianaLorenzo Milani.
Life
Born in 1890, he was ordained a priest by bishop Giacinto Gaggia in 1912. In 1915 he was a soldier during the First World War and became a military chaplain in 1918. On 1921 he was appointed parson in Cicognara, hamlet of Viadana, in Lombardy. In 1925 he was denounced by the fascists because he refused to sing the Te Deum after the attempted attack against Mussolini by Tito Zaniboni. On the night of 1 August 1931, he was called from the outside of his presbytery and was shot at twice by a revolver; both bullets missed. On 1932, he was transferred to the parish of Bozzolo, where he spent the rest of his life. From 8 September 1943, he was active in the struggle to liberate Italy and encouraged young people to participate. He saved many people from deportation. In July 1944, he was imprisoned by the police and then released. He was forced by the fascists to live in an isolated manner until 25 April 1945. After the Second World War, the National Association of the Partisans of Italy of Cremona granted him the title of partisan.
