Antonio Loi was born in Decimoputzu, in the province and diocese of Cagliari, on Dec. 6, 1936, the last of seven children of Salvatore Loi and Greca Furcas, farmers. In 1949, at the age of 13, he entered the diocesan seminary of Iglesias, moving in October 1954, for his philosophical and theological studies, to the Sardinian Regional Seminary, which at the time was based in Cuglieri. In January 1963, in his fourth year of theology, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which he took as an opportunity to offer his life even more to the Lord. His desire to become a priest was granted: having obtained a dispensation from the Holy See, he was ordained on September 21, 1963, in the chapel of Iglesias Seminary. Over the next twenty months he exercised ministry not only through the Sacraments, but also by alternating between hospitalizations and returns to his family. He died in his own home on May 29, 1965. His mortal remains rest in the Decimoputzu cemetery. The clearance for his cause of beatification and canonization, for the recognition of heroic virtues, goes back to March 16, 2017. The first session of the diocesan inquiry was held on April 19, 2018 in Cagliari, Italy, in the chapel of the Sardinian Regional Seminary. The postulator for the cause of beatification is Fr. Fabrizio Deidda. The family maintains his bedroom as it was when Don Antonio was alive.
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