Irondequoit Catholic Communities
Pier Giorgio Frassati

Celebrating 100 years

(1901-1925)

On May 20, 1990, Pope John Paul II beatified Pier Giorgio Frassati. In 1977, as archbishop of Cracow, the future pope had sponsored an exhibition on the life and works of this handsome, strapping young man who combined enthusiasm for sports with a personal lay apostolate of Catholic civic and social action. Cardinal Wojtyla rightly considered him a paragon of today's Catholic youth. "The man of the eight beatitudes," he called him.

Frassati came from a prominent but not very pious family of Turin, Italy. His father, an agnostic, was founder and director of the liberal newspaper, La Stampa. Influential in politics, Alfredo Frassati served a term as senator and later was Italian ambassador to Berlin. Pier Giorgio's mother, Adelaide Ametis, was a painter who went through the motions of Catholic practice. The family realized only years later that their scion had grown into a man of unique Christian devotion and charity.

Pier was a fan of skiing, mountain-climbing, horseback-riding, wrestling and swimming. One can well imagine that he was an avid reader of sports pages. But as early as 1918 he had joined the St. Vincent de Paul Society and begun to spend much of his spare time anonymously serving the sick and needy. His prosperous father was stingy with his allowances, but Pier Giorgio often spent his carfare money on the poor. He chose mining engineering as a career. He was a mediocre student in that field, but he had chosen it mostly so that he could "serve Christ better among the miners." In 1919 he joined the Catholic Student Federation. He also enrolled, despite his parents' protest, in the Popular Party the Catholic party dedicated to promoting the social teachings of the Church. He soon realized that while charity was necessary, social justice was, too: "Charity is not enough," he said, "we need social reform."

Fascism, launched in the early 1920s, had its own program of social reform, but Frassati detested the Fascist ideology. He was furious when some members of the Popular Party decided to compromise with the totalitarianism of Benito Mussolini. "Fascists behave like swine," he exclaimed, "and then try to cover it up by putting crucifixes in schoolrooms." Participating once in a Church-organized demonstration against the Fascists held in Rome, he withstood the violence of the police. When they knocked a banner out of a marcher's hands, Pier Giorgio seized it and held it high, rallying his companions while he used the banner pole to ward off the blows of the policemen.

A crisis occurred in Pier Giorgio's life when he decided to marry a certain Laura Hidalgo. Since she, too, was active in Catholic social causes, Frassati's parents effectively blocked his plans. Her association with Catholic Action, which they considered too religious, made her totally unacceptable to them.

The son acquiesced in this veto, but what would he do? Trained spiritually in the Catholic organizations to which he actively belonged, daily communicant that he was, and salutary influence on his "gang" of outdoor fans, "The Leftists," he might have thought of the priesthood. But no; his decision was to devote himself radically to Christ as a lay person. The closest he came to the religious life was his enrollment in the third order of the Dominicans. (He took the name "Brother Jerome".) Thereafter, as Pope John Paul II said, he lived out his chastity as a "joyous discipline."

Pier Giorgio Frassati died of polio on July 4, 1925. He may have caught the disease while caring for the sick. Concern about his grandmother's illness made him delay seeking personal medical care. His parents expected that the elite of Turin and certain personal friends would attend his funeral. To their great surprise, thousands lined the streets. Most of these mourners were the poor people whom he had taken care of. Until then, they had known him only as "Brother Jerome" of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and were quite unaware of the influential status of his family. It was these poor that agitated for his canonization. A book about him sold 120,000 copies, testifying to his popularity in Italy as a key figure in Catholic Action. It was also translated into 19 languages. Catholic Action organizations were well represented among the 50,000 who attended his beatification. His sister Luciana, now 88, was also on hand. She confessed that the family had never known of Pier's charity!

In proclaiming Frassati a "blessed", the Pope described him as "a model for young people." He was indeed a "twentieth-century man."

--Father Robert F. McNamara


Page last modified on October 08, 2007, at 11:35 AM