Leonardo Castellani (November 16, 1899March 15, 1981) was an Argentine priest, essayist, novelist, poet and theologian. Born in

Reconquista, Santa Fe Reconquista is a city in the north of the , from the provincial capital. It is the head town of the General Obligado Department, and it has 99,288 inhabitants according to the . The city lies on a branch of the Paraná River opposite the city ...

, Castellani was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1930, he studied Philosophy and Theology in

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. Back in his country, he worked in the Catholic press and went into politics as a representative of Catholic nationalism. He was among the candidates of the ''Alianza Nacionalista'' party for a seat in Congress in the 1946 elections. Between 1946 and 1949 he clashed with his own

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, who promptly sent him to a two-year confinement in Manresa (

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). After his petition to attend his brother's funeral was refused, Castellani escaped from Manresa returning to Argentina. He was then expelled from the order and suspended from his functions as a priest, which were repristinated in 1966. Castellani has left a considerable bulk of essays, novels, tales and poetry. Among the wide range of subjects he tackled, his religious writings deserve a special place, especially his sermons on the gospels and his exegesis of John's Apocalypse. His prolific intellectual production includes a commented edition of St.

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wit ...

’

Summa Theologica The ''Summa Theologiae'' or ''Summa Theologica'' (), often referred to simply as the ''Summa'', is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), a scholastic theologian and Doctor of the Church. It is a compendium of all of the main th ...

. One of his last books is dedicated to Søren Kierkegaard, for whom he nurtured a great admiration. Father Castellani's style is forceful, lively and of an acute intelligence. Considering his right wing sympathies earned him the dislike of the progressive left wing ''intelligentsia'' on the one hand while his conflicts with the Jesuit order spawned the mistrust of weighty sectors of the Catholic world, it is no surprise that Castellani's work has never reached the position it deserves among Argentine letters. Apart from a restricted group of fervent admirers such as Argentine writers Rafael Squirru and Sebastian Randle (author of a voluminous biography of the priest published by Vortice in 2003) and Cardinal

Antonio Quarracino Antonio Quarracino (8 August 1923 – 28 February 1998) was a Cardinal of the Catholic Church of Argentina and the Archbishop of Buenos Aires between 1990 and 1998. Biography Early life and priesthood Quarracino was born in Pollica, Prov ...

who consider him one of the most significant Argentine intellectuals of the twentieth century, Castellani's work is rather unknown in his own country, especially outside Catholic and Traditionalist circles.

External links

*http://hjg.com.ar/txt/lc/index.html *https://web.archive.org/web/20080324033549/http://www.geocities.com/tomistas/castellani.htm *https://web.archive.org/web/20070612220312/http://www.feyrazon.org/Castellani.htm *Series of translated essays by Fr. Castellani: :*http://www.statveritas.com.ar/Libros/Libros-INDICE.htm :*http://tollers.jack.googlepages.com/etvoil%C3%A0%21 1899 births 1981 deaths People from Reconquista, Santa Fe Argentine people of Italian descent Argentine male novelists 20th-century Argentine male writers Argentine male poets Argentine essayists Male essayists Argentine Jesuits Former Jesuits Catholic philosophers Argentine translators 20th-century Argentine poets 20th-century translators 20th-century essayists 20th-century Argentine novelists 20th-century Argentine Roman Catholic priests {{Argentina-translator-stub