Giovanni Remo Fornasini (23 February 1915, in Pianaccio – 13 October 1944, in San Martino di Caprara) was an Italian Roman Catholic priest, resistance member and patriot in Bologna.
He was murdered by a German Nazi Waffen SS soldier and was posthumously awarded Italy's Gold Medal of Military Valour.
Fornasini was born in Pianaccio, a frazione of the Italian comune Lizzano in Belvedere, in the then Province of Bologna, Kingdom of Italy.
Angelo had been gassed in World War I, and could no longer carry on his trade; instead, he became a postman, delivering letters.
Don Giovanni Roda was elderly, and following his death in August 1942[3] Fornasini was installed as parish priest in Sperticano on 27 September.
[2] Don Lino Cattoi, who had been his fellow student, said of his time in Sperticano, "I cannot explain the life he led there: he seemed always to be running.
[7][8] Riding his bicycle, he gave assistance in nearby parishes,[7] including San Cristoforo di Vedegheto, whose priest had left for health reasons.
[4][7] Serra said: "On the sad day of 27 November 1943, when 46 of my parishioners were killed in Lama di Reno by Allied bombs, I remember Don Giovanni working as hard in the rubble with his pickaxe as if he had been trying to rescue his own mother".
[2] At some later date, partisans blew up a train in a railway tunnel near Misa, and the Nazis took Italian civilians as hostages.
He then convinced the Germans that several other acts of sabotage had been committed by Tuscan partisans, and that local people had not been involved.
[14] (4) According to Don Angelo, Fornasini persuaded the German commander to rescind his order to lay waste to Marzabotto by the gift of money and a pig.
Fornasini was forced to attend a squalid German party to celebrate her birthday where, despite insults and mockery, he protected her.
[13][19][20] The best contemporary account may be in the diary of Don Amadeo Girotti (1881/82-1974), parish priest of San Michele Arcangelo di Montasico in Bologna.
(1) On 21 April 1945, Luigi recovered the body of his brother Giovanni, and some days later gave it a makeshift burial at Sperticano.
Pastor to the old, to the mother, to the bride, to the innocent child, he several times shielded them with his own body against the heinous atrocities of the German SS, saving many lives from death and encouraging all, both the fighters and their families, to heroic resistance.
Arrested, miraculously escaping death, he at once and boldly resumed his role as pastor and soldier, first among the ruins and massacres of his destroyed Sperticano, then at San Martino di Caprara; where, however, he was struck down by the ferocity of the enemy.
The voice of Faith and of Fatherland, he had dared fiercely to condemn the inhuman German massacres of so many of the weak and of the innocent, thereby calling down upon himself the barbarity of the invader and being slain; he, the Shepherd who had always with the utmost courage protected and guided his flock by his piety and by his example.
– San Martino di Caprara, 13 October 1944An elementary school in Porretta Terme, Scuola Primaria "Don Giovanni Fornasini", is named in his honour.
[4][9][11] Fornasini has been called "the angel of Marzabotto"[2][3][4] and one of "the three martyrs of Monte Sole" along with his murdered fellow priests Ferdinando Casagrande and Ubaldo Marchioni.
[8][15][32] In the 2009 film The Man Who Will Come (Italian: L'uomo che verrà), which concerns the Marzabotto massacre, actor Raffaele Zabban portrayed the small role of Fornasini.
[33] In 2014, Italian musician Alessandro Berti created what he called a performance piece that uses spoken narration and vocal and instrumental accompaniment to relate the story of the last year of Fornasini's life.
[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] On 21 January 2021, Pope Francis authorised the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to issue a beatification decree officially recognising Fornasini's martyrdom.