Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

Feast Day: July 4

• On April 6, 1901, Pier Giorgio Michelangelo Frassati was born in Turin, Italy. Adelaide Ametis, his mother, was a painter. His father Alfredo was a prominent figure in Italian politics who founded and oversaw the newspaper "La Stampa" and served as an Italian senator and ambassador to Germany.

• Pier Giorgio became a member of the Marian Sodality and the Apostleship of Prayer at a young age and was given permission to partake in daily Communion (which was rare at that time).

• He joined the St. Vincent de Paul Society when he was 17 and spent a lot of his free time helping the sick and the poor, looking after orphans, and helping the demobilized veterans who were coming home from World War I.

• He became a member of Catholic Action and the Catholic Student Foundation in 1919. He became a very involved member of the People's Party, which supported the social teaching of the Catholic Church in accordance with the ideas of Pope Leo XIII's apostolic letter, Rerum Novarum.

• He played a key role in the planning of the first Pax Romana convention in Ravenna in 1921. Pax Romana was an organization whose goal was to unite all Catholic students worldwide in order to work together for world peace.

• Pier Giorgio suffered poliomyelitis just before earning his university degree; doctors later assumed that he acquired it from the sick patients he cared for. Pier Giorgio, who had neglected his own health while his grandmother was ill, passed away on July 4, 1925, at the age of 24.

• Pier Giorgio Frassati was beatified by Pope John Paul II on May 20, 1990, in St. Peter's Square, which was packed with thousands of people. The pope referred to Pier Giorgio Frassati as the "Man of the Eight Beatitudes."

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, Pray for Us!