- Maria Wiering (OSV News).
"What strikes me most about Pier Giorgio Frassati is his approachability," said Christine Wohar, executive director of FrassatiUSA. "He shows us how we can ... be saints in the normalcy of our lives."
Frassati was handsome, manly, robust, funny and athletic, he noted. He was devoted to the Eucharist and Mary, and spent time in adoration and praying the rosary. He came from a wealthy family, but was also committed to personal charity as well as broader social causes and faith-based activism.
However, according to Wohar, she also had challenges that were easy to identify with. His parents' marriage was on the verge of legal separation, he struggled to juggle his studies with other commitments. He was torn between dating a girl he liked and being misunderstood by family members.
Will be canonized on Sunday, with Carlo Acutis
Pope Leo XIV plans to canonize the young man from Turin, who died in 1925, along with his Italian compatriot, Blessed Carlo Acutis, on September 7. The date is a month later than the one originally indicated - though not confirmed - in November 2024 by the late Pope Francis, who had said Frassati would be canonized during the Jubilee of the Youth, July 28-Aug. 3.
Wohar had planned a group pilgrimage for that celebration, and when the date was changed, it proved too difficult to reschedule. So she and others spent late July and early August visiting Frassati-related sites in Italy before attending the Jubilee events in Rome. There they venerated Frassati's relics in the basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, where his body had been temporarily transferred from Turin for the Jubilee celebration.
On that coffin was inscribed, in his handwriting, a phrase that many of his devotees have made his personal motto, loaded with spiritual meaning: "Verso l'alto" ("Towards the heights"). He wrote the phrase on another photo that had been taken of him while climbing, clinging to a rock face and looking toward the top. It would be his last climb.
Pious Catholic, passionate activist for the poor
Pier Giorgio Michelangelo Frassati was born on April 6, 1901 in Turin, the son of Adelaide Ametis, a painter, and Alfredo Frassati, a journalist and politician, who was an Italian senator and ambassador to Germany. As a child, Pier Giorgio participated in Catholic groups and tried to receive daily communion.
Strengthened by a solid prayer life rooted in Marian devotion and the Eucharist, at the age of 17 he joined the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The goal was to care for the poor and wounded soldiers returning home from World War I. He was a member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
He was known for giving money and his possessions to poor people, and even gave up vacations at the family's summer home, saying, "If everyone leaves Turin, who will take care of the poor?"
Social Doctrine of the Church
His concern for marginalized and oppressed people would persist throughout his short life. It influenced his decision to study mining engineering at the Royal Polytechnic University of Turin, with the goal of ministering to miners.
Although he was intelligent, his studies were affected by the time he devoted to helping the poor and to political activism. In 1919 he joined Catholic Action, which promoted the social doctrine of the Church, especially as articulated in the 1891 encyclical "Rerum Novarum," promulgated by Pope Leo XIII.
Two years later, he helped organize the first Pax Romana conference in Ravenna, whose goal was to unify Catholic university students to work for world peace. In 1922, he joined the Lay Dominicans, also known as the Third Order of St. Dominic, choosing the name "Girolamo," in honor of the fiery 15th century Dominican preacher in Florence, Girolamo Savonarola.
Frassati, known for his cheerfulness, reverence and occasional bickering
During his youth, he was an avid lover of outdoor activities and enjoyed skiing and mountaineering, art and music, poetry and theater. He regularly gathered his friends together and was known to be a prankster, shortening his friends' sheets and waking them up with trumpet blasts, which earned him the nickname "Fracassi," as a "flop," a noisy fuss.
"He knew how to have fun," Wohar said. "He was an explosion of joy. He was the life of the party." But in church he was reverent and serene, "He would talk everything over with the Lord," he added.
"He made religion seem fun and engaging," Wohar said. "Stories are told about how he would place bets and, if he won, his friends had to go to adoration or Mass or pray the rosary or something like that." "He believed that the apostolate of persuasion was the most beautiful and necessary thing to help his friends find the way of God."
Frassati was also involved in fist fights because of his faith-based political convictions. And on more than one occasion, in clashes with communists, fascists and law enforcement during activist demonstrations.
In the midst of his studies, social life and political activism, Frassati continued to take his spiritual life, charitable works and evangelizing efforts seriously, never missing an opportunity to invite his friends to join him in prayer, Scripture reading or Mass.
Aware of its eternal future
An often overlooked aspect of Frassati was his daily attention to death, Wohar said. He was committed to preparing each day for his own death, saying he had the "ambition" to meet God, even as his judge.
"He was aware of his eternal future, and that really determined how he lived his present," she said. "He wrote beautiful letters about it. One day he visited someone who had just passed away in the hospital and said, 'This is what's going to happen to me in a short time,' which was almost prophetic."
Symptoms of polio. Fullness of charity
In late June 1925, Frassati began to experience symptoms of polio, which he probably contracted while visiting the sick and poor of Turin. However, her grandmother was also dying at home, so she minimized her illness and focused on it, as did her family. She died on July 3.
As his suffering worsened, his mind was also on his friends and the poor. He implored his sister, Luciana, to deliver medicines and other promised items to the needy whom he visited regularly. She recounted this in her book "My Brother Pier Giorgio: His Last Days".
Pier Giorgio Frassati died on July 4, 1925, at the age of 24, and his funeral was attended by hundreds of the poor of his city, revealing to many, especially his relatives, the fullness of his charity. He was initially buried in the family crypt in the nearby town of Pollone, but his body was transferred to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin after his beatification in 1990.
Frassati: a "man of the beatitudes".
At Frassati's beatification, St. John Paul II described him as a "man of the beatitudes".
"In him, faith and daily events merge harmoniously, so that adherence to the Gospel translates into loving care for the poor and the needy, in a continuous crescendo until the last days of the illness that led to his death," the Pope said.
"His love of beauty and art, his passion for sports and the mountains, his attention to the problems of society did not diminish his constant relationship with the Absolute," he continued. "Totally immersed in the mystery of God and totally dedicated to the constant service of his neighbor: this is how we can sum up his earthly life!".
A 'Saint Frassati' for our times
Although Frassati's cause for canonization was opened shortly after his death, it stalled for some time. Wohar said he believes his canonization this year, a century after his death, is part of God's plan.
"The Lord, in his wisdom, knew that we needed a Pier Giorgio Frassati, a Saint Frassati, for a time like the one we are living in now," he said.
"If he had been canonized, for example, in the 1940s, we might never have had him on our radar," he continued. "Perhaps he would have fallen into oblivion as one of the many, many, many Italian saints. The fact that he is canonized in this Jubilee Year of Hope, when we need hope in our culture, I think presents an image of hope for young adults, for everyone, but especially for that age group."
He added, "It's God's perfect timing."
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Maria Wiering is editor-in-chief of OSV News.
This report was originally published in OSV News, and is available at here.
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