After 41 years, a “Florentine” archbishop in Florence

A Florentine archbishop 41 years after the appointment of the previous one, namely Silvano Piovanelli, first elected on 28 May 1982 as auxiliary, titular of Tubune of Mauritania, and then called by John Paul II to lead the Church of Florence on 18 March 1983 after the premature death of Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, which occurred on 26 October 1982. But not only that: Don Gherardo Gambelli, nominated yesterday as successor to Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, despite being born in Viareggio, grew up in Castelfiorentino, where Piovanelli was parish priest for almost twenty years, from 1960 to 1979. In the town once considered “the reddest in Italy”, the young Gherardo, active in the parish Catholic Action, also developed a vocation to the priesthood and ended up being ordained a priest on 2 June 1996 by the same Piovanelli, who in the meantime had become archbishop of Florence. If that wasn’t enough, Gambelli will be ordained bishop in Santa Maria del Fiore on 24 June, the feast of the patron Saint John the Baptist, as happened with Piovanelli whose this year, among other things, marks the centenary of his birth having been born in Ronta di Mugello , in the province of Florence, on 21 February 1924.
But the coincidences between the two do not end here, because the newly elected archbishop of Florence, among his previous roles, was also at the Pieve di Santo Stefano in Pane, the parish of Rifredi where the Opera della Divina Provvidenza Madonnina was born Grappa by will of Don Giulio Facibeni who had Piovanelli as cooperator vicar, sent there as the first appointment by a great archbishop of Florence, Florentine by adoption, Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa. And Betori also recalled yesterday that Rifredi is “a particularly significant place for the history of the Florentine Church” when introducing his successor. On the occasion he also explained that Don Gherardo, who will ascend the chair of the Florentine saints Zanobi and the Dominican Antonino Pierozzi, is “the eighty-seventh pastor in the series of bishops and archbishops of this Church known to us”.
«In this Florentine Church – Gambelli reiterated – I was born and raised, as a lay person first in the parish of Santa Verdiana in Castelfiorentino, then as a priest in the parishes of Santo Stefano in Pane in Rifredi, dell’Immacolata and San Martino in Montughi and of the Madonna della Tosse”. In this regard it must also be said that, although there has only been one Florentine bishop from the Second Vatican Council onwards, in recent years there have been quite a few bishops chosen from among the clergy of Florence: we remember for example Claudio Maniago (first at the helm of the diocese of Castellaneta and today of Catanzaro-Squillace), Andrea Bellandi (Salerno-Campagna-Acerno), Stefano Manetti (first in Montepulciano-Chiusi-Pienza then in Fiesole), Giovanni Paccosi (San Miniato) and father Giovanni Roncari, who despite being a minor friar Capuchin was in Florence when he was appointed to lead the diocese of Pitigliano-Sovana-Orbetello then united with Grosseto in person episcopi.
Finally, worth mentioning is an honorary Florentine, Cardinal Betori, who has decided to remain in Florence as bishop emeritus and this, as his successor underlined yesterday, «fills us with joy, because it shows his love for our city which has grown in recent years, despite the character of us Florentines, who do not always shine with our ability to welcome those who come from outside.”