Patron of the UST Senior High School
Feast Day: July 4
Pier Giorgio Michelangelo Frassati was born in Turin, Italy on April 6, 1901.听His mother, Adelaide Ametis, was a painter.听His father, Alfredo, was the founder and director of the newspaper, 鈥淟a Stampa,鈥� and was influential in Italian politics, holding positions as an Italian Senator and Ambassador to Germany.
At an early age, he developed a deep spiritual life. He joined the Marian Sodality and the Apostleship of Prayer, and obtained permission to receive daily Communion, which was rare at that time. His life centered on the Holy Eucharist and on the devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.听At the age of 17, he joined the St. Vincent de Paul Society and dedicated much of his spare time to serving the sick and the needy, caring for orphans, and assisting the demobilized servicemen returning from World War I.
He decided to become a mining engineer, studying at the Royal Polytechnic University of Turin, so he could 鈥渟erve Christ better among the miners,鈥� as he told a friend.
Although he considered his studies his first duty, they did not keep him from social and political activism.听In 1919, he joined the Catholic Student Foundation and the organization known as Catholic Action.听He became a very active member of the People鈥檚 Party, which promoted the Catholic Church鈥檚 social teaching based on the principles of Pope Leo XIII鈥檚 encyclical letter听Rerum Novarum.
What little he had, Pier Giorgio gave to help the poor, even using his bus fare for charity and then running home to be on time for meals.听The poor and the suffering were his masters, and he was literally their servant, which he considered a privilege.听His charity did not simply involve giving something to others, but giving completely of himself.听This was fed by daily communion with Christ in the Holy Eucharist and by frequent nocturnal adoration, by meditation on St. Paul鈥檚 鈥淗ymn of Charity鈥� (I Corinthians 13), and by the writings of St. Catherine of Siena.听He often sacrificed vacations at the Frassati summer home in Pollone (outside of Turin) because, as he said, 鈥淚f everybody leaves Turin, who will take care of the poor?鈥�
In 1921, he was a central figure in Ravenna, enthusiastically helping organize the first convention of Pax Romana, an association which had as its purpose the unification of all Catholic students throughout the world for the purpose of working together for universal peace.
He often went to the theater, to the opera, and to museums.听He loved art and music, and could quote whole passages of the poet Dante. Mountain climbing was one of his favorite sports.听Outings in the mountains also served as opportunities for his apostolic work.听He never lost the chance to lead his friends to Mass, to the reading of Scripture, and to praying the rosary.
Fondness for the epistles of St. Paul sparked his zeal for fraternal charity, and the fiery sermons of the Renaissance preacher and reformer听Girolamo Savonarola听and the writings of St. Catherine impelled him in 1922 to join the Lay Dominicans (Third Order of St. Dominic).听He chose the name Girolamo after his personal hero, Savonarola.听鈥淚 am a fervent admirer of this friar, who died as a saint at the stake,鈥� he wrote to a friend.
Like his father, he was strongly anti-Fascist and did nothing to hide his political views.听He physically defended the faith, at times, involved in fights, first with anticlerical Communists and later with Fascists.听Participating in a Church-organized demonstration in Rome on one occasion, he stood up to police violence and rallied the other young people by grabbing the group鈥檚 banner, which the royal guards had knocked out of another student鈥檚 hands.听Pier Giorgio held it even higher, while using the banner鈥檚 pole to fend off the blows of the guards.
Just before receiving his university degree, Pier Giorgio contracted poliomyelitis, which doctors later speculated he caught from the sick whom he tended.听After six days of terrible suffering, Pier Giorgio died at the age of 24 on July 4, 1925.
Pier Giorgio鈥檚 last preoccupation was for the poor.听On the eve of his death, with a paralyzed hand, he scribbled a message to a friend, asking him to take the medicine needed for injections to be given to Converso, a poor sick man he had been visiting.
Pier Giorgio鈥檚 funeral was a triumph.听The streets of the city were lined with a multitude of mourners who were unknown to his family 鈥� the poor and the needy whom he had served so unselfishly for seven years.听Many of these people, in turn, were surprised to learn that the saintly young man they knew had actually been the heir of the influential Frassati family.
Pope John Paul II, after visiting his original tomb in the family plot in Pollone, said in 1989: 鈥淚 wanted to pay homage to a young man who was able to witness to Christ with singular effectiveness in this century of ours.听When I was a young man, I, too, felt the beneficial influence of his example and, as a student, I was impressed by the force of his testimony.鈥� He was beatified on May 20, 1990 and was called the 鈥淢an of the Eight Beatitudes.鈥�
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Senior Teacher Maria Violeta R. Tare, LPT, PhD
