Lorenzo Milani was born in Florence in 1923 to a rich middle-class family. His father, Albano Milani, and his mother, Alice Weiss, were staunch secularists. Alice Weiss was Jewish and a cousin of Edoardo Weiss, one of Sigmund Freud's earliest disciples and the founder of the Italian Psychoanalytic Association. Milani's paternal great-grandfather was Domenico Comparetti, a leading nineteenth-century philologist. In his own work as an educationist, Milani emphasized learning how to use words effectively. In June 1943, after a period of study at the Brera Academy, Milani converted from agnosticism to Roman Catholicism, perhaps after a chance conversation with Don Raffaele Bensi, who later became his spiritual director. He also exchanged a complacency of the economically fortunate for solidarity with the poor and despised. He was ordained a priest in 1947 and sent to assist Don Daniele Pugi, the old parish priest of San Donato in Calenzano. There he established his first "school of the people", The fact that it served children from both believing and non-believing families scandalized conservative Catholic circles. After Pugi's death in 1954, Milani was sent to Barbiana, a small, remote village in the Mugello region. At Barbiana, Milani continued his radical educational activities despite both clerical and lay opposition.
Writings
In the spring of 1958, he published his first book, Pastoral Experiences. In December the Holy Office ordered its withdrawal from circulation as "inopportune". despite failing to find in it any errors of doctrine or breaches of ecclesiastical discipline. Milani made no public objection. In his "Letter to Military Chaplains" ("Lettera ai cappellani militari"
Death and legacy
In 1967, shortly after the publication of Letter to a Teacher, Milani died in his mother's house in Florence of leukemia. In 2008 Helena Dalli, an MP and member of the Malta Labour Party, summarized Milani's life and work: "Milani's ideas were considered dangerously radical and his bishop sent him into a sort of internal exile to a small mountain village north of Florence called Barbiana, thought too remote for him to cause problems. He started a full-time school there for children who had been failed or abandoned by the traditional education system. Eventually, hundreds of pupils of all ages were attracted to his teaching methods. Artists, farmers, scientists, artisans and professionals were invited to give hands-on explanations of their activities. Pupils were also made to read and evaluate national and international news. The aim was to educate them to analyze events critically so as to face life without fear and to solve problems with determination and awareness." A documentary film from RAI describes Lorenzo Milani's educational project and its impact on Italian society. The film includes interviews with former students of the school at Barbiana and others.. Pope Francis visited Barbiana on 20 June 2017 to visit and pray at Milani's tomb. He also visited the tomb of another pacifist and advocate for the poor Primo Mazzolari in Bozzolo.
