[1] In his late adolescence he experienced the dramatic upheavals in Italian life in the period that followed the First World War with the violent rise to prominence of Fascism that Benito Mussolini led.

[4] In 1927 he became a student in the department of Classical Literature of the Sacred Heart college in Milan which was under the direction of Father Agostino Gemelli; in 1931 he received his degree with the grade summa cum laude.

The outbreak of the Second World War saw Lazzati commissioned as a lieutenant in the Fifth Alpine Regiment in the Trent Division and in the wake of the 8 September 1943 Armistice of Cassibile - upon his refusal to swear allegiance to the Fascist puppet rump state known as the Italian Social Republic - he was arrested in Merano and interned in Nazi concentration camps.

In 1946 he became part of the national administration of the Christian Democrats and was elected to the Assemblea Costituente (1946–1948) on 2 June 1946 and then to the Chamber of Deputies of the new Italian Parliament (1948–1953).

[4] Lazzati returned to lecturing from 1958 and during the storm of student upheavals was appointed to succeed Ezio Franceschini as the rector of the Sacred Heart college which turned into a position he held for five terms until 1983.

In this period he entrusted the post of Director of the Departiment of Religious Studies to his former assistant Raniero Cantalamessa[6] who was serving at the time as a professor of Christian Origins.

In 1979 - upon reaching the age limit - Lazzati retired from the Chair of Ancient Christian Literature and his former student Luigi Franco Pizzolato succeeded him.

He was hospitalized once again two months later at the Capitanio Clinic and on 14 May his priest friend Giuseppe Grampa celebrated Mass for him at his bedside and gave him the Anointing of the Sick.

[2] In 1991 the Secular Institute of Christ the King began promoting the cause for Lazzati's beatification which received archdiocesan approval before it could be considered on a formal level.

The cause culminated on 5 July 2013 when Pope Francis approved the promulgation of a decree that recognized that Lazzati had lived a life of heroic virtue which also conferred the title of Venerable upon him.