Marcantonio Durando was born in Mondovì, Piedmont, in 1801. His mother was devout. His father and two brothers held the anticlerical, liberal views of the Risorgimento, Italy's unification movement, and the brothers became a government minister and a general.
Marcantonio Durando was born in Mondovì, Piedmont, in 1801. His mother was devout. His father and two brothers held the anticlerical, liberal views of the Risorgimento, Italy's unification movement, and the brothers became a government minister and a general.
Marcantonio wanted to be a missionary in China but was sent instead to preach parish missions in Piedmont as a Vincentian priest. He led the Vincentians in Turin for almost fifty years and brought the Daughters of Charity into Italy. In 1865 he founded the Sisters of Jesus the Nazarene to nurse the sick in their homes. He died in Turin in 1880 and was beatified in 2002.
Marcantonio Durando was beatified in 2002.