Many Sicilian country towns and especially Palermo and Bronte, were witnesses of his fecund, apostolic activity and bold social initiatives as the building of public advantage works (colleges, boarding schools, institutes). In few decades he becomes the tireless Palermo's apostle: in 1747 he builds the college of the virgins of Holy Maria Of The Carmine (destined to kindergarten the "unsafe girls"); builds an analogous college in Vicari; buys the oratory in the Teatini house and restores it; director of the Sapienza College (one of Maria's two risen colleges in Palermo), he enlarges it and restores it; enlarges and improves the girls' Reclusorio of the Hospital In Palermo; he organizes help to the dying and the convicts. In 45 years of fecund apostolate, he left memories of holinesses and prodigies also in Monreale, Nicosia, Castelvetrano, Messina, Leonforte, Alimena, Resuttana, and many other centers of Sicily. At Palermo, while in contact with colleges and scholastic institutes gets the idea to found a school for the formations of secular boys, but also new priests, in his native country town, with no schools and in nearly in total illiteracy. In Bronte whoever wanted to get an education had to leave his country town. His idea, few years later, was followed by Donna Maria Scafiti with the institution of the Collegio di Maria (1780) for girls and by Pietro Graziano Calanna who founded the "Royal Public Schools for maidens of Bronte" (1823). Ignazio Capizzi, poor, humble but highly cultured and a great organizer, conceived and built the majestic "Capizzi College" during few years. Ignazio Capizzi, poor, humble but cultured and great organizer, conceived and built the majestic "Capizzi College" during few years. The 25/6/1771 he selects the space where to build it, right in the center of town (San Rocco), and two years later he buys the land. Then sends the priest Marvuglia, architect of the Palermo Council to prepare the project and the 1st of May 1774 he blesses and puts the first stone. The construction activity lasted till 1778 and then finally on the 15th of October was celebrated the solemn opening of the school that eventually acquired so much importance and fame especially in Sicily and Southern Italy. In Bronte, the country town in which he was born and that he had left to get an education, he and built the majestic college, for the formation of secular boys but also new priests. To realize the work he had to overcome ironies and a great deal of difficulties, ostracisms, contrasts and calumnies of every kind; he went begging for the necessary resources everywhere. "Many gentlemen of Palermo, who admired him very much, gave him large sums, ..."
"the wealthy in Bronte and in the near country towns contributed generously to the construction. The priests, the nobles, all the people, when requested, helped to carry, stones and every other material on their shoulders". (G. De Luca, History of the town of Bronte). A testimony of the priest De Albo (Eulogy of the sac I.Capizzi, Palermo, 1786) reported in the Benedetto Radice "Historical Memories of Bronte", reminds us of the enthusiasm and the sacrifices of Ignazio Capizzi and the admiration of the people of Bronte seeing: "The good old man, with sledgehammer in hand, break very hard boulders, or, with hoes take off earth, or help to carry beams or take out rubble and sometimes sweep the corridors sprinkling them with water that he had been drawing from the cistern, and that was not happening only sometimes, but fairly often, making him sweat profusely". Ignazio Capizzi did not limit himself to the constriction of the college. He disciplined the studies, the director's election, the teachers' salaries, the duties and the obligations of teachers', of boarding school members and of all the students in general. Such rules governed the college for about a century and a half. The college, wanted by the humble priest Capizzi, is considered, to a good reason, a truly big glory for Bronte, that has been put, at least in the last two centuries, in a position of safe pre-eminence compared to other centers of eastern Sicily (in a parliamentary session of 1885, Ruggero Borghi defined the Capizzi College "forum of the Latin language"). Ignazio Capizzi died in the Olivella convent In Palermo on September 27th, 1783, where he was buried and then laid down in the Church Della Sapienza. Before dying, in August, it sent all his valued books to the Library Of The college with the express commandment that should be opened for usefulness of the audience. His mortal remains were moved to Bronte and from the 17 April 1994 rest in his College, in the Church Of the Sacred Heart. The funeral monument placed on the left nave was made by the sculptor Ivo Celeschi. Ten years after his death, in 1793, in Bronte and in Palermo, was instituted the ordinary process for the beatification of the humble priest.
The documentation, sent in Rome in 1808, is favorably accepted in 1817 by the Congregation Of The Rites. For his theological virtues and the fecund apostolate, on May 27th, 1858, Ignazio Capizzi was declared venerable from Pius IX, that called him the San Filippo Neri of Sicily. The cause of his beatification is still going.
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Ignazio Eustachio Capizzi was born in Bronte on September 20th, 1708, son of a shepherd and a wool spinner.
