Fr. Silvano Livi: a personal remembrance

Father Daniele Marletta | January 9, 2026

 

Only a short time has passed since the forty days from the death of Fr. Silvano (Livi), formerly Bishop of Luni. I say at once that I would have preferred not to publish this remembrance of mine now, for the very simple reason that the figure of Fr. Silvano ought to be viewed with a minimum of distance, including temporal distance, in order to see what he left that was good and what was bad in Italian Orthodoxy. This also because the final events of his life were not edifying, and this we all know very well. If I find myself compelled to write, it is above all to respond to a remembrance published by Fr. Ambrogio (Cassinasco), of the Patriarchate of Moscow, who could not refrain from pouring into a written piece of his, circulated through the website of the Russian parish of Turin, twenty-five years of spite, with the aim of downgrading the entirety of Fr. Silvano’s work, and above all his adherence to the Old Calendar Greek Church.

(https://www.ortodossiatorino.net/DocumentiSezDoc.php?cat_id=31&id=13985)

Indeed, the doubt arises that the whole of Fr. Ambrogio’s piece wishes to do nothing other than reduce the very Old-Calendarist presence in Italy to a mere incident along the way. I reserve the right to cite, as needed, the individual points of Fr. Ambrogio’s writing.

 

 

I wish to underscore one fact: it is not my intention to “defend” Fr. Silvano from the accusations brought against him by Fr. Ambrogio. I know his faults better than he does, since I myself was a victim of an (un)canonical trial on his part. He also often confessed to me. Unlike Fr. Ambrogio, however, I also know well what his merits were. I wish to limit myself to pointing out the facts that (strangely!) Fr. Ambrogio has omitted and those that he has (certainly unintentionally) distorted.

Let us come to the chronicle. Fr. Silvano was born in Pistoia in 1947, receiving the name Francesco; he earned a degree in Philosophy at the University of Florence, and later in Theology; he also attended a post-graduate School of Psychotherapy. In 1977 he became a Roman Catholic priest; at the same time, in those years he became a high-school teacher of philosophy and later a psychotherapist. Increasingly drawn to the Orthodox world, especially after having met Fr. Marco (Davitti), with whom he always remained in relations of great friendship, he initially passed to the Eastern rite, while remaining Roman Catholic. Subsequently, in 1984, he became an Orthodox Christian and was incardinated in the Deanery of Italy of the Moscow Patriarchate. Because of a series of disagreements with the Dean, Fr. Gregorio Cognetti, he later passed to the Patriarchate of Serbia, and in 1999 he was received by the Old Calendar Greek Church, in which he was consecrated bishop in 2004.

Fr. Ambrogio writes that Fr. Silvano, in the Deanery of Italy, immediately manifested episcopal ambitions, which is probably true. It is also true, on the other hand, that an episcopal consecration would have been far easier for him to obtain by remaining Catholic. Strangely, Fr. Ambrogio, in recounting the facts of the time, and especially the disputes with the Dean, forgets to report the role of Fr. Gregorio Cognetti in the founding of the so-called “Italian Orthodox Fraternity,” the heterozygous twin of the “Orthodox Church in Italy” founded by Antonio de Rosso, just as he forgets to report the contacts between De Rosso himself and Fr. Gregorio. This is not the most appropriate place to speak of it, but what is certain is that blame and justification were not divided in such a way as to be able to say that only Fr. Silvano was at fault: “for reason and wrong,” the good Manzoni warns us, “are never divided with so sharp a cut that each side has only the one and the other.” (I promessi sposi, ch. 1). Moreover, Fr. Silvano, although he did not have particular familiarity with languages (as Fr. Ambrogio rightly notes in his article), was nevertheless at the time the Italian Orthodox priest with the best theological training (together with Fr. Marco Davitti), and it is rumored that this did not sit particularly well with Fr. Gregorio. In short, the conflict between Fr. Silvano and Fr. Gregorio was far more complex and nuanced than is told to us in Fr. Ambrogio’s article. As for the rest, I am certain that one day he will also wish to explain to us the reasons that led the parish that had belonged to Fr. Gregorio to leave the Moscow Patriarchate for that of Constantinople.

Returning to our account, Fr. Silvano at this point left the Moscow Patriarchate to enter that of Serbia. At the time Italy was within the Serbian Eparchy of Central Europe (which later took the name Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Düsseldorf and Germany), then headed by Bishop Konstantin (Đokić), who had excellent relations with the Pistoia community. Subsequently, in a general reorganization of the Serbian dioceses, Italy was incorporated into the Metropolis of Zagreb and Ljubljana, headed by Metropolitan Jovan (Pavlović). Jovan was an ultra-ecumenist, a representative, among other things, of the Serbian Church to the World Council of Churches between 1982 and 1992. His ecumenical activity was often criticized by the more traditionalist circles of the Serbian Church. The passage to the Old Calendar Greek Church was therefore not due so much (or only) to disagreements with the hierarchies, but also to this ultra-ecumenical attitude. This is a mentality that was increasingly taking hold in the Orthodox world, including in Italy: let us recall, just to give one example, the consecration of the Orthodox Chapel of Saint Anastasia in Magnano Alfieri, on 29 June 1997, carried out by Bishop Gurij of Korsun (Moscow Patriarchate), but with the participation of Roman Catholic prelates, including the local bishop. Fr. Ambrogio, who at the time was a hierodeacon, will certainly remember having had to add to the litanies, by order of his bishop, a petition for the Catholic religious authorities.

To be clear: go ahead and say that Fr. Silvano used ecumenism as an excuse, if you wish; but ecumenism was (and is) in fact a problem, and a serious one at that. However harsh this may seem, the canons of the Church are quite clear: if a bishop falls into heresy, the priest has the duty to cease commemorating him. This is what Fr. Silvano did, and for this reason he left the Serbian Church.

Were there also other reasons? Certainly; it is hardly a crime to have more than one reason for doing something.

Was he also driven by his mania for greatness and by a craving to become a bishop? It may be so; no one is perfect.

Since Fr. Ambrogio wished to report circumstances that “have not so far been publicly clarified” regarding Fr. Silvano’s conversion and his acceptance within the Deanery of Italy, I permit myself to report as well a few little-known details: the passage to the “Old-Calendarist” ecclesiastical jurisdiction was also carried out with the support of Fr. Marco (Davitti), who, although belonging to the Moscow Patriarchate, had undertaken to reassure the members of our community who might in some way harbor doubts about it. I myself had occasion to speak with him; he had personally known Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos and Fili and remembered him with filial affection. Years later, on the occasion of Fr. Silvano’s episcopal consecration, a small delegation from Fr. Marco’s parish also came to Pistoia, bringing as a gift as well a vestment for the newly elected bishop.

Let us now come to the painful notes.

In the last ten years of his life, unfortunately, the Bishop of Luni underwent a gradual cognitive decline, with progressive loss of short-term memory, vertigo, and an altered perception of heat. I recall having seen him more than once lose his balance and fall; just as I recall that he was forced to keep his cell at a temperature far too cold for anyone else who entered it; above all, I unfortunately recall some reckless financial decisions due to his progressive loss of clarity. It is within the framework of this progressive decline that the final events of his life must be seen. First of all came his schism from Greece, with the constitution of an “autocephalous Metropolis,” in which none of the priests of the Diocese of Luni followed him; a schism that compelled the Synod in Greece to take the painful decision to depose him from his status and restore him to that of a simple monk. Then, a few years later, when his mind had lost almost all clarity (and many can bear witness to this), there also came the decision to return to Catholicism. Concerning this decision there would be very many things to say that I prefer not to say out of Christian charity (not so much Christian charity toward Fr. Silvano, but rather toward those who forced him into this act and toward those who basely took advantage of it).

And now a small consideration.

Fr. Silvano was certainly not the only Italian Orthodox Christian to commit some small or great inconsistency between what he preached and what he did. I could cite people with lives certainly less edifying than his: Fr. Adeodato Mancini, who from an Orthodox presbyter became a bishop and then a “Syro-Chaldean Patriarch,” only to return finally to Roman Catholicism as well; Fr. Evloghios (Hessler), presbyter of the Moscow Patriarchate, then Old-Calendarist bishop, then also founder of a questionable autocephalous Metropolis; and finally the least edifying of all, who was also the most “canonical” (in the aberrant sense generally given to this word), Fr. Ambrogio Melzi. None of the people I have cited deserved at death the spite of our Turin parish priest. It would seem that only for Fr. Silvano does the saying “de mortuis nihil nisi bene” [“speak well of the dead”] not apply.

I hope I’ll manage: with a bit of luck, I’ll live long enough to avoid the obituary on the well-known Turin website. Otherwise it matters little: as Totò used to say, it is the living who put on these farces; the dead have more serious things to think about.

 

Italian source: https://anastasis.orthodoxia.it/silvano-livi-un-ricordo-personale/