Lorenzo Milani

Lorenzo Milani (1923 to 1967) was an Italian Catholic priest, an educator of poor children and an advocate of conscientious objection. Born in Florence into a rich middle-class, secular family, he converted to Catholicism in 1943 and was ordained in 1947. In Calenzano he set up a school of the people that served children from both believing and non-believing families, and after being sent to the remote Mugello village of Barbiana in 1954 he continued his radical educational work there. With his pupils he produced Letter to a Teacher, which denounced a class-based school system that advantaged the children of the rich over those of the poor, was translated into about forty languages and served as a manifesto for the movement of 1968. He died of leukemia in 1967, shortly after its publication.