Matteucci, the ‘forgotten’ bishop

That circle of intellectuals in Poggio alla Malva

“I like to write, Daniela Nucci confesses, but most of all I enjoy browsing through the archives.” In fact, the book that she has recently published is the library of many libraries, and not a bibliography: a careful selection of published and unpublished writings. It was published by Attucci Editrice Publishing Company in 2011. It talks about Benvenuto Matteucci.
A pastor and man of the Church, who died in 1993 at the age of 83, who was a highly prepared commentator of the Second Vatican Council, then guided by Pope Paul VI. The only Carmignanese who became Bishop (and Archbishop): in 1968, in Pisa. Nonetheless, very few have written about him. There is not even a road or street named after him, maybe it will come soon.” I found a good thesis written by the Carmignanese Alessandra Piccioli and not much else”, says Daniela.  After a militancy in the green party (environment party), also in Rome, and while waiting for some nephews and nieces, she devoted her retirement years to research and writing. “The next book, she announces, will be on Borgardo Buricchi” a seminarian and friend of Don Matteucci. He was among the partisans who died blowing up a German train loaded with explosives in Poggio alla Malva on 11 June 1944. Young people who wanted freedom, he wrote later the bishop, shouldn’t be pushed around.
The volume on the pastor, “Benvenuto Matteucci. The years of Poggio alla Malva (1938-1961)”, was presented on a busy evening in Carmignano in September 2011. A book that should be read in one go, even though there are nearly four hundred pages of letters, articles, and notes from the parish diary and photos. There are many ideas, but this is the only way to understand and feel the torment and deep thoughts of this promising priest from Carmignano, a young deputy director at the seminary in Pistoia, sent in 1938, at the age of twenty-eight, in punishment to Poggio alla Malva and forced to stay there until 1961.
The first months were hard. He was born in Carmignano, nevertheless he  felt in exile, in that “Russia of the Valdarno”, where half were farmers and the other half stone quarry workers or workers in a munitions factory. “I do not find a soul with whom to talk” he wrote. Then he went back to studying. He wrote articles, took part in radio programs on the Bible and in the house of Poggio alla Malva, for twenty years, he created a true cultural gathering. Piero Bargellini attended it. He was there during the war years with his family. Also father Balducci, Soffici, La Pira, Prezzolini and Ungaretti attended. Matteucci was an innovator: in 1941 he wrote that it would be nice to celebrate Mass in Italian. But he was also orthodox. As a a good Tuscan, he had a temper. The book tells the story of an huge outburst with Don Balducci, who disagreed on the road taken.
“Oh Marx oh Christ,” he wrote after 1948. He remained true to that line. Many don’t come to church and prefer political rallies, he complained. But the Communists, he added, are still “generous in their offerings to the forty hours and the festivities. “Scene of a country divided, yet united, already seen in “Don Camillo and Peppone” film saga. (Wf)

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