A proud native of Lawrence, born in the "Immigrant City" on July 6, 1943, he was one of the two sons of the late Vincent and Rose (Rapisardi) Gianni. In addition to his parents, he was predeceased by his only sibling, his brother Emmanuel. He died at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on June 20, 2026.

He grew up in Holy Rosary Parish (Italian), attending its elementary school and then Central Catholic High School, from which he graduated in 1961. Entering the archdiocesan seminaries, he was enrolled first at Cardinal O'Connell, Jamaica Plain; then, St. Clement Hall, Brighton; and then, for theology studies, at St. John, also in Brighton.

Auxiliary Bishop Jeremiah F. Minihan ordained him to the priesthood at Holy Cross Cathedral on May 23, 1970. Richard Cardinal Cushing gave him his first priestly assignment as an associate at St. Lucy, Methuen. The cardinal's declining health prevented his being the ordaining bishop of what would be the last ordination class of his quarter-century tenure as Boston's archbishop.

His appointment to Methuen, a city that borders his hometown Lawrence, brought him to familiar territory in the Merrimack Valley. St. Lucy's had a large Italian population, and Father Gianni's fluency in Italian was among the reasons he was assigned to the parish.

In the following years, he would be assigned to multiple archdiocesan parishes, either as an associate pastor, a parochial vicar, an administrator, or a pastor. All those assignments were between the south bank of the Mystic River and the border of the Commonwealth with New Hampshire.

He was an associate between 1972 and 1990 at St. Patrick, Lawrence; Our Lady of the Assumption, Lynnfield; Sacred Heart, East Boston; and St. Michael, North Andover.

He was named administrator of St. Rose of Lima Parish, Chelsea, in 1990, and later as pastor, serving until 1996. He then moved pretty much next door, as pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, Revere. Vinny always had stories and this parish provided him with an interesting platform. The rectory of the parish was directly under a landing pattern for Logan Airport. If you stood on its roof, you could almost reach the landing gear of a plane. Needless to note, the noise level was impressive. He found a ready template for tales, real or imagined, related to the proximity to Logan.

He enjoyed a short period of sabbatical in 2000 before he accepted a nine-year stint as a member of the Emergency Response Team. During those years, he was administrator at St. Mary of the Assumption, Revere; St. Adelaide, Peabody; St. Mary Magdalen, Tyngsborough; St. Athanasius, Reading; and St. Florence, Wakefield.

In 2009, he was named pastor of the Wakefield parish and used to joke that he was there six years before he realized the parochial patron, St. Florence, was a man! That Wakefield parish had been named in honor of the pastor of the parent parish, St. Joseph, Wakefield, the late Msgr. Florence J. Halloran.

Cardinal O'Malley granted him senior priest retirement status on June 1, 2019. That lasted for three months, when he was named administrator of St. Agnes, Middleton, and St. Rose of Lima, Topsfield. In 2020, he was named administrator of St. Mary Parish, Georgetown; and on completing that assignment, in 2022, he was named administrator of both St. Mary-St. Catherine of Siena Parish and St. Francis de Sales Parish, both in Charlestown. This was his only assignment south of the Mystic River.

Vinny loved to talk, not about himself, but about his adventures as a priest. He was never harsh about his evaluation of some circumstances, but he never faked that every place was a bed of roses. He was always extremely proud of his Italian heritage and his home city. He was a happy priest.

His funeral Mass was celebrated at the church of his first assignment, St. Lucy, Methuen, on July 1, 2026. Archbishop Richard G. Henning was the principal celebrant; Merrimack Regional Bishop Robert F. Hennessey was a concelebrant. Others concelebrating were Father Thomas Keyes, Regina Cleri, Boston, who also served as the homilist; Father Darin Colarusso, pastor of Transfiguration of Our Lady and Savior Jesus Christ, Wilmington; Fathers Paul E. Kilroy and Charles E. Bourke, two of his seminary classmates; Father Robert E. Casey, pastor of both Gate of Heaven and St. Brigid of Kildare, South Boston; and other of his many priest friends.

Following the funeral Mass, Father Gianni was buried in St. Mary-Immaculate Conception Cemetery, Methuen.