Career
He was among the candidates of the Alianza Nacionalista party for a seat in Congress in the 1946 elections. After his petition to assist 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 Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica.
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.
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 who consider him one of the foremost Argentine intellectuals of the Twentieth Century, it would not be exaggerated to say that Castellani’s writings are still widely ignored in his own country.
