Background
Luigi Gino Ligutti was born on March 21, 1895, in Romans, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the youngest of five children of Spiridione and Teresa (Ciriani) Ligutti.
St. Mary's Seminary and University
("Rural Roads to Security" is a well-documented book about...)
"Rural Roads to Security" is a well-documented book about agrarian life during the Great Depression, and carried a warranted subtitle: "America's Third Struggle for Freedom". According to the authors, the first struggle was the war for American independence from Great Britain. The second struggle was the American Civil War, which succeeded to preserve the union and emancipate the enslaved. The third struggle was taking place during the time Ligutti and Rawe were writing - the Great Depression - when the American people's faith in their political and economic system was being shaken. The industrial slowdown of the 1930s was expected by many to continue indefinitely; some policy-makers believed that agriculture needed to be emphasized to pull the country out of its crisis. Some wondered whether the United States would remain "the land of the free".
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Luigi Gino Ligutti was born on March 21, 1895, in Romans, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the youngest of five children of Spiridione and Teresa (Ciriani) Ligutti.
Luigi Gino Ligutti began to study for the priesthood in Italy, and emigrated to America in 1912, traveling immediately to Des Moines, where he had relatives. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree at St. Ambrose College, Davenport, in 1914, and studying at St. Mary's Seminary and University, Baltimore, Luigi Gino Ligutti was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1917 - at the time, the youngest priest in the United States. His superiors allowed him to cultivate his love for the classics with graduate studies at Catholic University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago and served as a Latin teacher at Dowling Academy in Des Moines.
Luigi Ligutti was a Latin teacher at Dowling Academy in Des Moines, however, a shortage of rural pastors led to his appointment to Woodbine, Iowa, in 1920, and then to Assumption Parish in Granger, 15 miles northwest of Des Moines, in 1926. Ligutti’s country pastorates exposed him to the various problems of rural life for Catholics.
In 1924 Luigi Ligutti joined the newly formed National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC), which intended to be an advocate for the neglected rural segment of the American Catholic population. In 1934 the young pastor was appointed the Des Moines diocesan director of rural life and was elected to the executive committee of the NCRLC. The next year he was elected chairman of the diocesan directors’ section of the conference, and in 1937 he was elected president.
Luigi Ligutti was honored for his new prominence in the movement by receiving the title of monsignor in 1938. As titular head of the NCRLC from 1937 to 1939, he presided over the acrimonious severance of the grassroots-oriented conference from its Washington, D.C.-based executive secretary.
Luigi Ligutti built up the organization of the NCRLC, multiplying its budget about 30-fold by the end of his 20- year tenure and increasing the staff to 18 full-time employees. He tried to reach the average American Catholic farmer through popular periodicals and massive distribution of literature on both social doctrine and devotions.
After World War II, Luigi Ligutti mirrored the emergence of the United States as a world power with his expanding interest in international rural life. He joined the call for American participation in food relief for the many war-devastated countries. He also helped many refugees find homes on American farms.
In 1948 Luigi Ligutti was appointed Vatican observer to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Due to financial difficulties within the NCRLC brought on in part by Ligutti’s absorption in his international travels, he was removed as executive director in 1960. However, through his appointment to the new position of NCRLC director of international affairs, he continued to aid rural Catholics around the world until 1970, when he moved to Rome.
From 1969 to 1971 Luigi Ligutti served Paul VI as an apostolic visitor to straighten out the financial affairs of the church in Malta. In 1971 he fulfilled a longtime dream by founding Agrimissio, an organization dedicated to helping Catholic missionaries promote agricultural development. He served as the first chairman of its board of directors until 1981.
("Rural Roads to Security" is a well-documented book about...)
Luigi Gino Ligutti was a leader of the Catholic rural life movement in the United States.
Luigi Ligutti became the personal symbol for the Catholic rural life movement through his enthusiasm, energy, and unique style. The tall, balding cleric spread the Catholic rural gospel by frequent travel - throughout the United States by train in the 1940s, and throughout the world by airplane in the 1950s.
In a typical year, he gave more than 200 lectures. Luigi Ligutti
had a gift for expressing his homespun philosophy in pithy sayings that were dubbed "Ligutti-isms." They ranged from his humorous advice to farmers ("Ora et labora - and use a lot of fertilizer!”) to his reflection to Pope Pius XII on the relation of rural life to Cold War politics: "When a poor family becomes the owner of a cow, then communism goes out the back door."
In 1924 Luigi Gino Ligutti joined the newly formed National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC), which intended to be an advocate for the neglected rural segment of the American Catholic population and served till 1970.
By his participation in international rural life, Luigi Ligutti came into contact with the highest levels of the Catholic church. He developed personal friendships with Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI, and used those friendships to benefit rural Catholics around the world. He induced Pius to do several favors for the rural movement and influenced the writing of the rural sections of John’s and Paul’s social encyclicals and a document of the Second Vatican Council.
Physical Characteristics: Luigi Gino Ligutti was tall and balding.