Don Giovanni Siciliani
Category: Religious persons
Born in Petriolo on June 26th, 1714 – Died in Petriolo on March 28th, 1785
Giovanni Antonio Siciliani was born in Petriolo on June 26th, 1714. On June 28th, he was christened by the provost Don Giuseppe Adami in the Church of St Martin.
Giovanni Antonio completed his education in Fermo. Willing to become a Jesuit, he begun the novitiate in 1729.
Count Giuseppe Sabbioni, who wrote about the historical events of Petriolo in his work dated 1800, when referring to Giovanni Antonio Siciliani, he celebrated the goodness of his spiritual actions and the virtue of his disposition.
Besides the ministry of teaching, he was committed to the moral education of young people. Affected by a harsh form of arthritis, Giovanni Antonio asked for the possibility to spend his days in the quiet atmosphere of the Abbey of Fiastra (which had belonged to the Jesuit order since 1581).
Because of the suppression of the Jesuit order in 1773, Don Giovanni Siciliani came back to Petriolo, where he started to handle the Church of Madonna della Misericordia. He gifted the Church of the Suffrage with two reliquaries containing the relics of many Saints.
Laid in bed for 5 long years, Giovanni Antonio Siciliani died on March 28th 1785 at the age of 70. In his will, a third of his properties was left to the needy people of Petriolo.
The local community, which had a special veneration for him, celebrated his funeral with magnificence. Moreover, Petriolo’s local community asked to the painter Giacomo Falconi from Montottone to realise Don Giovanni Siciliani’s portrait. It would have been preserved in the town hall. Nowadays that portrait can be seen at the “Monsignor Marcello Manforni Museum of Wooden Processional Objects”.
