July 4--Bl. Pier Giorgio Frasatti, Third Order Dominican

 

Pier Giorgio Frassati, in the mountains from the book A Life in Pictures by Luciana Frassati.

An ordinary man is going to be canonized! He wasn’t a cleric. He did no miracles in his lifetime. He wasn’t a visionary or a mystic. He went to school to become an engineer. He helped the poor. He was a mountain climber. He protested against injustice. He opposed Italian fascism. He is Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati. St. John Paul II said he was a “man of the Beatitudes,” “a young man filled with a joy that swept everything along with it, a joy that also overcame many difficulties in his life”. Pope Francis said: “Pier Giorgio said that he wanted to return the love of Jesus that he received in Holy Communion by visiting and helping the poor.”

Frassati (1901-1925) was the son of an agnostic newspaper publisher and an artist. He became a member of the Catholic Federation of University Students and Catholic Action in Italy as a college student and also a member of the Third Order Dominicans. “He often said: ‘Charity is not enough; we need social reform’. He helped establish a newspaper entitled Momento whose principles were based on Pope Leo XIII's Rerum novarum.” He died of polio in 1925. “His parents expected Turin's elite and political figures to come to offer their condolences and attend the funeral and expected to find many of his friends there as well. All were surprised to find the streets lined with thousands of mourners as the cortege passed out of the reverence felt for him among the people he had helped.”

Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati was an ordinary man with an extraordinary dedication to God, love, and holiness. This is the purpose of canonization, to show that God’s love can be exemplified in our normal, everyday lives by loving others extraordinarily. Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, pray for us!