Born in Corbetta, near Milan, 18 October 1873, the fourth of fifteen children – he will have a missionary brother and a Canossian sister - he studied in Milan seminaries and was ordained a priest in Milan on 4 April 1896. His bishop, the blessed Cardinal Andrea Ferrari, sent him, a young priest of 22, as vice-chancellor of the archbishopric of Saronno. After 8 years he obtained entry into the Salesians.
He taught Moral Theology and Sociology in the student house of Foglizzo (1906-1910), then he was appointed parish priest of the incipient parish "Santa Maria Liberatrice" in the Testaccio district of Rome. The neighborhood, dangerous at the time, was visibly transformed, thanks to the goodness of its new parish priest. One day, slapped on the street by a violent man, Fr Luigi said to him: "Thank you!", and presented the other cheek.
In 1916, he was chosen by Benedict XV as bishop of Sutri and Nepi. He gave himself a five-point rule book: "I will love my diocese as a bride. In the oration, with Jesus, I will deal with the interests of souls; I will not make any important decisions before I have consulted Him. I will avoid luxury and superfluity. I will have a timetable and I will observe it faithfully. The calling card of my episcopal life: charity prepared for every sacrifice." Thus he did indeed for 26 years, in the full Salesian spirit: "I am, via a gift from God, a Christian, a priest, a Salesian and a bishop: I must become a saint."
He was always ready for every sort of work and sacrifice for the good of souls. The characteristic note of the figure of Msgr. Olivares was his amiable manner, the affability of his smile, his delicacy of mind and spirit. He knew how to live by the difficult binomial he had wanted as his episcopal motto, "Suaviter et fortiter", an echo of that kindness so favored and embraced by Don Bosco himself. Fr Luigi loved his priests extraordinarily, understanding them and defending them always.
He died on 19 May, 1943, in Pordenone, where he had gone to preach a course of spiritual exercises to the young high school students of the Salesian Institute. The fame of holiness following his death was immediate and widespread. One of the doctors who had treated him at the hospital in Pordenone confessed: "As long as the Catholic Church has champions like this, it is destined to always new and greater triumphs. Thus men can preach the Gospel and claim they are heard even by unbelievers."
