 Born as Lazzaro Ponticelli in Cordani, a frazione (civil parish) in Bettola, Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna, in northern Italy, he was raised in a mountain hamlet in Bettola, one of seven children born to Jean Ponticelli and Philomène Cordani.His father sold livestock on the fairgrounds and occasionally worked as a carpenter and cobbler.His mother cultivated the family's small plot of land and, like many women of the area, commuted three times a year to the Po Valley to work in its rice fields.