Leonardo Castellani

Leonardo Castellani (November 16, 1899 – March 15, 1981) was an Argentine priest, essayist, novelist, poet and theologian.

Born in Reconquista, Santa Fe, Castellani was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1930, he studied Philosophy and Theology in Rome.

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.

Considering his right wing sympathies earned him the dislike of the progressive left wing intelligentsia on the one hand while his conflicts with the Jesuit order spawned the mistrust of weighty sectors of the Catholic world, it is no surprise that Castellani's work has never reached the position it deserves among Argentine letters.

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 most significant Argentine intellectuals of the twentieth century, Castellani's work is rather unknown in his own country, especially outside Catholic and Traditionalist circles.