Known as the priest of Bozzolo, his thoughts anticipated some of the orientations of the Second Vatican Council, especially about the "Church of the Poor", religious freedom, and pluralism.

[1] From the start of the 1950s, don Primo developed a social doctrine with empathy towards the disadvantaged (where a lot of people depend on charity) and pacifism, which earned him criticism and sanctions from the ecclesiastical authorities and led to his being marginalized in his own parish of Bozzolo.

In November 1957, the archbishop of Milan Montini, future Pope Paul VI, called on him to preach in his diocese.

The occasion was part of a one-day helicopter pilgrimage of the Pope to two locations in Italy: to Bozzolo, and then to Barbiana, a parish associated with the work of the priest-educationalist and conscientious objector Lorenzo Milani.

In 1925 he was denounced by the fascists because he refused to sing the Te Deum after the attempted attack on Mussolini by Tito Zaniboni.