More About Father Vittorio
I’m blogging (almost) every day in the run-up to the US release of Daughter of Genoa. Today, a bit more insight into one of the novel’s two point-of-view characters.
In a previous post, I mentioned that Father Vittorio is a kind of spiritual cousin to Father Damien Karras in The Exorcist. Here are a couple more facts about my personal favourite tormented Jesuit.
To write him, I had to learn about Jesuit life all over again
If you know one Jesuit, you know one Jesuit. These highly educated, intellectually engaged priests and brothers tend to be strong personalities (at least, in my experience), and they hold a wide range of theological and personal views. But they do share an organisational culture that is famous for going out to the margins, engaging in social justice causes and supporting the most vulnerable in society. Think of the late Pope Francis, and you have a good idea of what the modern Jesuit ethos can look like in practice.
I have spent around fifteen years now seriously engaged with Jesuit history and culture, and I have a good friend who lives in a Jesuit community in Rome. So when I set out to write Father Vittorio’s story, I was fairly confident that I could describe his everyday context as well as exploring the ways in which the Jesuit ethos of the 1940s differed from that embodied by Pope Francis. But as I quickly discovered, the everyday business of being a Jesuit looked very different before the Second Vatican Council of 1962 – 1965. Vatican II marked a watershed in many aspects of Catholic life and liturgy, and Jesuit life changed too.
In 1944, Father Vittorio’s daily routine is shaped by many things that are now widely seen as archaic: for example, the wearing of the cassock, the use of physical mortification (the scourge, the barbed ankle chain), silence at mealtimes, and a near-total renunciation of his family of origin. He is also the product of a much more rigid, unforgiving formation than Jesuits experience today, although it is still a very demanding and rigorous process.
To enter into his world, I had to understand this very different culture – one that few people today would recognise. Fortunately, I was able to speak to two priests who had lived in community with much older Jesuits and had learned about their experiences. I also read as much as I could find, and consulted experts at the London Jesuit Centre and the Kolvenbach Library.
Once I had done my research, the biggest challenge was making Father Vittorio and his mindset accessible and sympathetic, while also highlighting the aspects of preconciliar Jesuit life that cause him pain or difficulty. I very much hope that I have managed it.
These five Jesuits are attending the General Congregation in Rome in 1938. This is how Father Vittorio would have dressed every day.
Welcome to Farm Street College →
He’s unusual for his context, but he’s not unique
When Anna first meets Vittorio in the bomb shelter under Galliera Hospital, her first reaction is one of hatred and mistrust. This reaction is both natural and justified, because the historical Society of Jesus was deeply implicated both in the Vatican’s proximity to Fascism, and in the promotion and implementation of the 1938 Racial Laws. This excellent article by historians David Kertzer and Roberto Benedetti explores just one angle of this dark and painful topic.
So it’s hardly surprising that Anna assumes at first that Father Vittorio is about to hand her over to the authorities. She has every reason to fear him.
“My father didn’t loathe the Jesuits for nothing. They were the Pope’s enforcers, relentless champions of Christian supremacy. They had persecuted the Jewish people for centuries. They had supported the Racial Laws, calling on Mussolini to defend Italian Christianity against its supposed Jewish enemy. They were everything that he, and I, and my good Scottish Protestant mother, hated about the Catholic church. ”
But as James Bernauer SJ explores in his sobering, necessary book Jesuit Kaddish: Jesuits, Jews and Holocaust Remembrance, there were some Jesuits who defied the culture of their organisation and stood up to defend the Jewish people. Cardinal Pietro Boetto SJ, who appears as a background figure in Daughter of Genoa, was one very prominent example. Father Vittorio belongs in that tradition, although he is far less impressive than a man like Boetto, and tragically less reliable, too.
Cardinal Boetto was exceptional on two counts: as a Jesuit, and as a powerful member of the Catholic hierarchy who was prepared to throw his entire moral authority and the totality of his resources behind the fight against Nazi oppression. You can read all about him in this wonderful article by Susan Zuccotti.
Father Vittorio is not a hero like Massimo Teglio, don Repetto or Cardinal Boetto. He is a flawed and struggling man whose (very human) impulsivity endangers those who need him most. But I think that he is lovable, and I hope at least some of my readers love him.
Daughter of Genoa is published in the US on December 9, 2025.