Lorenzo Delponte

Mons. Lorenzo Delponte was born in Castelnuovo Belbo, in the current one province of Asti and in the diocese of Acqui, on 31 May 1865, in a house still inhabited today in Ponti region, at the left bank of the Belbo, shortly after the town cemetery.

He was ordained a priest on 25 February 1888 by Bishop Giuseppe Maria Sciandra.

In 1891 Bishop Joseph Marello sent him pastor to Castel Boglione, where he remained until 1920: he founded a rural fund to help farmers, sharecroppers and the so-called "slavers", to free themselves from the masters and become owners of the land they cultivated. He undertook the construction of the parish church designed by the architect Giuseppe Gualandi.

In 1914 he was elected bishop of Alghero, but resigned to carry out the works undertaken as a pastor.

From 1914 to 1920 he taught Theology in the diocesan seminary, while continuing at the same time the duties of pastor of Castel Boglione.

In February 1920 he was appointed Vicar General of the Diocese.

On 5 September 1923, he was appointed as the bishop of Oropo and auxiliary of Acqui. He received the consecration on November 30, in the Cathedral of Acqui, by the archbishop of Vercelli Giovanni Gamberoni, co-consecrant bishops Giovanni Oberti and Emanuele Mignone.

In March 1924 he was appointed apostolic administrator of the diocese.

On 14 May 1926 he became bishop of Acqui.

He distinguished himself for moral stature, commitment, attention to his faithful who visited many times in their communities, especially the farthest from Acqui. Generous and charitable, with great sensitivity, was the first, among all authorities, to reach the places of the disastrous flood that fell on the territory of Molare and of Ovada on 13 August 1935, following the dike's failure.

He founded the diocesan work for vocations, the bulletin "Voca operarios" and, in the years from 1923 to 1937, promoted a series of structural interventions of restoration of the seminary, which defined "pupilla dei mio occhi", "garden of the diocese".

Convinced assertor of the participation of the laity in ecclesial life, in 1938 he indicated the diocesan synod, which left as a spiritual testament to the aquatic Church.

He died on 18 December 1942. He was buried in the crypt of Acqui Cathedral.

On July 29, 2012, at the entrance of the primary school in Castelnuovo Belbo, entitled to mons. Lorenzo Delponte, was placed a bas-relief Archived on March 5, 2016 at the Wayback Machine, depicting his face, made by sculptor Alessandro Guardini.

The episcopal genealogy is:

• Cardinal Scipo Rebiba
• Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santori
• Cardinal Girolamo Bernerio, O.P.
• Archbishop Galeazzo Sanvitale
• Archbishop Ludovico Ludovisi
• Cardinal Luigi Caetani
• Cardinal Ulderico Carpegna
• Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi Altieri degli Albertoni
• Pope Benedict XIII
• Pope Benedict XIV
• Pope Clement XIII
• Cardinal Marcantonio Colonna
• Cardinal Giacinto Sigismondo Gerdil, B.
• Cardinal Giulio Maria della Somaglia
• Cardinal Carlo Odescalchi, H.I.
• Cardinal Constantine Patrizi Naro
• Cardinal Lucido Maria Parocchi
• Cardinal Andrea Carlo Ferrari
• Archbishop Giovanni Gamberoni
• Bishop Lorenzo Delponte

• Giovanni Galliano, Monsignor Lorenzo Delponte. A pearl of bishop in a diadem of priests in the diocese of San Guido, Graphic impressions of Acqui Terme.