The Quilietti Family

Don Bencivenni was/is the Priest who helped Helen during her years of research into the Quilietti, Conti, Brucciani etc. families from the Village of Castelvecchio Pascoli.  He has been the Priest of the Church of St. Nicolo from 1954.  We visited his flat above the small Church where he showed us the fantastic archives.  He was absent from the family wedding in 2014 of Fallon Quilietti.  We build this page in his honour and hope that someone from the village can help us make this page into a testament of his life.

Don Bencevenni died in Januaary 2018 after a celebration of his 70 years as a Priest in the locality, the longest in the Barga region.

The sad sound of the “bells to death” that also spread from the bell tower of the Cathedral of Barga announced this morning the death of Don Ruggero Bencivenni, for many, many years, rector of the community of Castelvecchio. He would have turned 94 on June 3rd.

Don Ruggero left this morning during a hospitalization. His condition was delicate for a long time

To remember today Don Bencivenni, lived in all these decades, in direct contact with the Pascoli atmosphere, with Casa Pascoli bordering the church of Castelvecchio, the words written in one of his books by Don Silvio Baldisseri: “Always present in the houses of the parishioners, first in the visit of the sick to the hospital, always ready to go around for social practices and for any other useful service to the brothers … and people appreciate it with the enthusiasm of the heart. “

Don Ruggero, also of course passionate about Pascoli even if in his own way, was a frank priest, often of few words and sometimes also of impact, but undoubtedly for Castelvecchio was a dear figure who has accompanied the life of the community for many decades.

For years now his conditions were precarious, but in any case both his loss leaves a gap in the castelvecchiese community that certainly will be tightened around his rector next Saturday, January 13th. Don Ruggero’s funeral will be held at 11 in the church of Castelvecchio. The Bishop will officiate. Giovanni Paolo Benotto .

To remember the parish priest of Castelvecchio also arrived a priest accompanied by other people from the Marche, precisely from Pergola, the birthplace of Don Ruggero who had never forgotten and with whom he has always maintained contacts in particular with the parish priest of the parish of Pergola, contacts closed in the past years, also made of visits and stays that have become phone calls when the health conditions have not allowed Don Ruggero to move to his native land. And here, with the words reported in the phone calls received from Don Ruggero by the parish priest of Pergola, the emotion has increased, especially when he recalled the nice way with which he identified himself and asked by telephone of his colleague older pastor. Ways of doing that also accompanied him in his pastoral mission in Castelvecchio, sometimes perhaps a bit ‘too raw and direct, but they have distinguished, ways accompanied by its simplicity, making it appreciated by people who have known in all these long years passed in his Castelvecchio. Most of his priestly life Fr Ruggero lived it in the Pascoliano hamlet, learning and sharing the beautiful and ugly moments of life with his people, as in a large and healthy family, in which “some are part of the other

“His body, followed by so many people, was then transported to the cemetery of Castelvecchio where the last greeting was given to the parish priest with a prayer and the burial in simple land. “Forward with courage” was the phrase that Fr Ruggero frequently pronounced, often during religious services, especially at the conclusion of the same and in various circumstances of life lived with his people, a phrase that you must treasure, remembering a simple parish priest , old mold, which with his death also takes away a piece of identity and history of the last sixty years of the village Pascoliano.