Don Primo Mazzolari (Cremona, 13 January 1890 - Cremona, 12 April 1959) was a well-known Italian priest, author, partisan and advocate for peace who believed in the power of non violence to solve conflicts.

Primo Mazzolari was born in the early 1890s in Cascina San Colombano di Santa Maria del Boschetto, a rural village near Cremona. In 1902, he entered the seminary in the city. By the time he was a teenager, he had already developed a few ideas on the Church and society that he would continue to hold onto in his later years; these included faith in modernity (contrary to the rigid Catholic interpretation of it), patriotism of the Risorgimento movement, and a democratic outlook (“the future belongs to democracy: […] it must be us Christians, who have the true democracy of Christ”, he wrote in 1906). Additionally, he asserted his own right to religious freedom (“I love the Church and the Pontiff, but my devotion and my love do not destroy my conscience as a Christian”, he wrote in 1907).

Over the years spent in seminary, his thoughts developed and connected him to his classmate Annibale Carletti, who shared a modernist and reform-minded perspective. This fostered a strong bond of understanding and deep affection between the two seminarians, which endured for the rest of their lives.

On August 24th, 1912, he was ordained as a priest in Verolanuova by Bishop Giacinto Gaggia, and subsequently was appointed the curate of Spinadesco on September 1st. On May 22nd, 1913, he was appointed the curate of Santa Maria del Boschetto.

Out of his commitment to democratic interventionism, he joined the army as a volunteer in 1915, becoming a military chaplain in 1918. But then the dramatic experience of war soon made him change some of his early youth ideas.

On the final day of 1921, he was assigned to be the parish priest in Cicognara. Ten years later, he was relocated to Bozzolo, his home for the rest of his life.

Following the date of September 8, 1943, he was a supporter of the resistance movement, inspiring the younger generations to join in. He was arrested and freed shortly after, but he was forced to stay in seclusion and hidden until April 25, 1945. After the war, the Anpi of Cremona honored him for his efforts as a partisan.

In 1949, Don Primo Mazzolari founded the fortnightly Adesso, of which he was director. His writings, however, incurred the disapproval of the ecclesiastical authority, which ordered the paper to close in 1951. In July of the same year, the priest was additionally prohibited from preaching outside the diocese without permission and publishing articles without prior review from the church. The publication was able to resume in November, but Don Primo had to step down from his role as director. He continued to write some pieces under pseudonyms, some of which on the subject of peace and attracted more sanctions in 1954. These sanctions included a ban of preaching outside his own parish and a ban on publishing articles about social matters. His right-hand man, the engineer Giulio Vaggi, husband of Giulia Clerici and relative of the socialist leader Antonio Greppi, took over as director. Before his death in 2005, Vaggi created the autobiographical film L'uomo dell'argine, based on Mazzolari's book Between the Bank and the Forest.

«He had too long a wheelbase and we found it hard to keep up with him. So he suffered and we suffered too. This is the fate of the prophets“ (Pope Paul VI)

Since the 1950s, Don Primo Mazzolari had a social ideology that was close to the lower classes and to pacifist values, which caused him to be reprimanded and separated from the church in his parish of Bozzolo. Despite the institution's efforts, Mazzolari's words weren't entirely forgotten; in fact, he was often invited by Ernesto Balducci to conferences for writer-priests. The echoes of Mazzolari's ideas on conscientious objection were also heard in the Florentine world of Ernesto Balducci, and even on the political level, influencing individuals like Giorgio La Pira and Nicola Pistelli. This culminated in 1965, when Don Lorenzo Milani wrote Obedience is no Longer a Virtue, having previously collaborated with Mazzolari by writing for the newspaper Adesso.

In 1955, Don Primo Mazzolari published 'You Do Not Kill' anonymously, which was a criticism of the idea of 'just war' and the notion of victory, all in favour of a non-violent approach. This was also due to the emergence of the atomic bomb, which changed the way in which war was viewed. It was only in the late 1950s that Mazzolari started to receive recognition from major religious figures. In November 1957, Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Pope Paul VI) invited him to preach in Milan, and the following year he was invited to preach in Ivrea by Bishop Paolo Rostagno. In February 1959, Pope John XXIII gave Mazzolari a private audience and publicly referred to him as 'The Trumpet of the Holy Spirit in the land of Mantua', in recognition of the hardships he had endured.