Category: 2025 News

SCRANTON – The annual Mass in Italian will be celebrated on Sunday, Aug. 31, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. in the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Scranton. All are welcome to attend.

The liturgy is celebrated in conjunction with La Festa Italiana, which occurs over the Labor Day weekend, Friday through Monday, Aug. 29 – Sept. 1, on Courthouse Square, one block away.

Reverend David P. Cappelloni, V.F., La Festa Chaplain and pastor of Saints Anthony and Rocco Parish, and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, both located in Dunmore, will be the principal celebrant and homilist.

Concelebrants will include Monsignor Constantine V. Siconolfi, La Festa Chaplain Emeritus, and priests from the Diocese of Scranton. Deacons from the Diocese will also participate.

The Mass will be broadcast live by CTV: Catholic Television of the Diocese of Scranton and will be rebroadcast on Tuesday, Sept. 2, at 10:30 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., and Friday, Sept. 5, at 10:30 a.m. In addition to airing live on CTV, the Mass will air live on the Diocese of Scranton website and on all Diocesan social media platforms. It will also be available on demand after the live broadcast concludes.

This year’s Italian Mass is being offered in memory of all those members and friends of La Festa Italiana who passed away since the last Mass was celebrated, including:
Catherine Alu, Samuel “Danny” Argo, Sarah Marie Barrese, George Bieber,
Angela Costanzi, Ralph DelPrete, Craig Friedman, Cpl. Tony Gillette Jr., Lt. Kelly “Hoppy” Hopkins, Ann Azzeroni Kania, Paul LaBelle, Ron Leas, Joanne Ligorio, James P. Minicozzi, Bonnie Rosati, Tony “Red” Summa and Guy Valvano, who led the ushers for decades at the Mass.

Music ministry for the Italian Mass will be provided by the choirs of Saints Anthony and Rocco Parish and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, Dunmore, accompanied by a brass quartet, all directed by Joseph Moffitt. Dominick DeNaples, mandolin; Patrick Loungo, Nicholas Luongo, Eugene Mentz, organist, and Monica Spishock, timpani, will also accompany.

Ashley Yando-DeFlice is the cantor and the leader of prayer. The featured soloist will be T.J. Capobianco from the New York City Metropolitan Opera.

The lectors are Dr. Fred Gardaphe and Ann Genett. The Prayer of the Faithful will be led by Diane Alberigi, Atty. Frank T. Blasi and Joseph Guido.

The offertory gifts will be presented by Marlene Summa and Family, the Family of Guy Valvano, Robert W. Pettinato, the Honorable Robert Mazzoni and the Honorable Leonard Zito (Ret.).

Patrick Caramanno, Joshua Cillo, Carmen DiPietro Jr., Jonathan A. Eboli, Stephen A. Eboli, Richard Garofalo and Joseph Wentline are the ushers.

At the conclusion of Mass, members of The Italian Colony of Saint Lucy will process out with the statue of Saint Lucy onto the festival grounds to the Heritage Piazza on Spruce Street.

For news and updates, including the festival entertainment schedule, visit www.lafestaitaliana.org, Facebook: La Festa Italiana di Lackawanna County, Instagram: lafestascranton.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Christian hope is not about avoiding pain and suffering but about knowing that God gives people the strength to persevere and to love even when things go wrong, Pope Leo XIV said.

When Jesus allowed himself to be arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, he showed that “Christian hope is not evasion, but decision,” the pope told thousands of people gathered in the Vatican audience hall Aug. 27 for his weekly general audience.

“The way that Jesus exercised his freedom in the face of death teaches us not to fear suffering, but to persevere in confident trust in God’s providential care,” the pope said in his address to English speakers.

“If we surrender to God’s will and freely give our lives in love for others, the Father’s grace will sustain us in every trial and enable us to bear abundant fruit for the salvation of our brothers and sisters,” he said.

A person of faith, the pope said, does not ask God “to spare us from suffering, but rather to give us the strength to persevere in love, aware that life offered freely for love cannot be taken away by anyone.”

Jesus lived every day of his life as preparation for the “dramatic and sublime hour” of his arrest, his suffering and his death, the pope said. “For this reason, when it arrives, he has the strength not to seek a way of escape. His heart knows well that to lose life for love is not a failure, but rather possesses a mysterious fruitfulness, like a grain of wheat that, falling to the ground, does not remain alone, but dies and becomes fruitful.”

Naturally, Pope Leo said, Jesus “is troubled when faced with a path that seems to lead only to death and to the end. But he is equally persuaded that only a life lost for love, at the end, is ultimately found.”

“This is what true hope consists of: not in trying to avoid pain, but in believing that even in the heart of the most unjust suffering, the seed of new life is hidden,” he said.

After spending more than 90 minutes greeting people in the audience hall, including dozens of newlywed couples, Pope Leo went into St. Peter’s Basilica, where hundreds of people who did not get a place in the hall had been watching the audience and waiting for their turn to see the pope.

The pope thanked them for their patience, which, he said, “is a sign of the presence of the Spirit of God, who is with us. So often in life, we want to receive a response immediately, an immediate solution, and for some reason God makes us wait.”

“But as Jesus himself taught us, we must have that trust that comes from knowing that we are sons and daughters of God and that God always gives us grace,” the pope said. “He doesn’t always take away our pain or suffering, but he tells us that he is close to us.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Even though what is happening in Gaza is shocking and prospects for peace in Ukraine seem more complicated than ever, Catholics must continue praying and hoping, said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.

“We are appalled by what is happening in Gaza despite the condemnation of the whole world,” the cardinal told reporters in Naples Aug. 25 after Israeli military strikes on a hospital in Gaza killed at least 20 people, including five journalists.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack on the hospital, which should have been off limits in an armed conflict, was a “tragic mishap” that the Israeli military is investigating.

While in Naples for the opening of an Italian church conference focused on liturgy, the cardinal was asked about both Gaza and Ukraine.

“There is unanimity in condemning what is taking place” in Gaza, the cardinal said, referring both to the military strike on the hospital as well as the ongoing difficulty of providing humanitarian aid to Gaza’s civilian population.

“It makes no sense,” the cardinal said, according to Vatican News. “There seem to be no openings for a solution” even as the situation is “increasingly complicated and, from a humanitarian perspective, increasingly precarious, with all the consequences we are seeing day by day.”

As for Ukraine, Cardinal Parolin said that “on a theoretical level” there seem to be several potential paths to peace but “they must be put into practice,” and “clearly, a disposition of the heart is also required.”

The whole world needs to find reasons for hope, he said, which is precisely why Pope Francis chose hope as the theme for the Jubilee Year 2025.

“Today there are not many elements that help us to hope, especially at the international level,” but “we must not resign ourselves” and “must continue to work for peace and reconciliation.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Leo XIV will preside over his first canonization Mass Sept. 7, declaring the sainthood of two young Italians whose devotion to the Eucharist nourished a deep involvement in the cultures of their day.

Pier Giorgio Frassati was born April 6, 1901, in Turin and died there July 4, 1925, of polio at the age of 24. Carlo Acutis was born to Italian parents May 3, 1991, in London and died in Monza, Italy, Oct. 12, 2006, of leukemia at the age of 15.

Pope Francis had been scheduled to canonize Blessed Acutis in April during the Jubilee of Adolescents and to canonize Blessed Frassati in early August during the Jubilee of Young Adults.

While Christine Wohar, founder and executive director of FrassatiUSA, initially was disappointed that the canonizations were delayed, she told Catholic News Service that Pope Leo declaring them saints at a Mass apart from the jubilees also sends a message.

Their lives “are not really a message for just teenagers or young adults. They are a message for every Catholic,” she said. “You do not have to be 15 or 24, you just have to be somebody who is serious about living your Catholic faith.”

For Father Primo Soldi, a Turin priest and author of a biography of Frassati, the two young men are united by “a deep faith firmly tied to real life who arrived at the perfection of Gospel living, that is, they lived faith, hope and charity and the other cardinal virtues in a heroic way.”

“Just think about how both of them lived the ordeal of their illnesses and death — like saints: Carlo with the joy and faith with which he faced his treatment and Pier Giorgio with the patience with which he endured the agony of those few days” between the onset of symptoms and his death, Father Soldi told CNS.

Frassati and Acutis both had a deep devotion to the Eucharist and went to Mass every day.

In 1905, just four years after Frassati was born, St. Pius X published the decree “Sacra Tridentina Synodus,” encouraging frequent, even daily reception of the sacrament at a time when many Catholics received only a few times a year.

One of his Jesuit high school teachers encouraged him to go to Mass each day, receive the Eucharist and spend time in adoration.

For Frassati, Father Soldi said, it was not simply Eucharistic devotion but the entryway into a real relationship with Jesus and, as Frassati himself said, one that became the nourishment he relied on as he helped the poor, discerned the path of his life and became involved in politics and the struggle against the growth of fascism in Italy.

The same could be said for Acutis, who is well known for the database on global Eucharistic miracles he complied as a young tech-savvy student.

Cardinal Agostino Vallini, Pope Francis’ delegate at Acutis’ beatification in 2000, said the young man’s strength came from “having a personal, intimate and deep relationship with Jesus,” one in which the Eucharist was “the loftiest moment.”

Acutis “never withdrew into himself but was able to understand the needs of people, in whom he saw the face of Christ,” the cardinal said at his beatification. His was “a luminous life offered completely to others as Eucharistic bread.”

Prayer and service to others went hand in hand for both Frassati and Acutis. Both also endured teasing and misunderstanding because of their devotion but gently challenged their peers to embrace faith.

Living a little bit longer and in the tumultuous period between World War I and the rise of fascism in Italy, Frassati had more time to prepare for his vocation — he wanted to be a mining engineer and work with miners, who were among the poorest workers in the region.

He was born when Pope Leo XIII was pope and he studied “Rerum Novarum,” the encyclical published in 1891 that launched Catholic social teaching and focused particularly on the rights of poor workers. And Frassati joined the Italian Popular Party, founded by Father Luigi Sturzo and based on Catholic social principles.

“What gave him a humanity that was so rich, alive, complete, full and happy ultimately was Jesus,” Carlo Tabellini, a 38-year-old lawyer in Turin and member of the Pier Giorgio Frassati Cultural Center, told CNS.

When Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass with a million people attending the Jubilee of Young Adults Aug. 3, he urged them to follow Jesus and do something great with their lives, improving themselves and the world.

“Let us remain united to him, let us remain in his friendship, always, cultivating it through prayer, adoration, Eucharistic Communion, frequent confession and generous charity following the examples of Blessed Piergiorgio Frassati and Blessed Carlo Acutis who will soon be declared saints,” the pope said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Every Catholic at Mass, but especially the altar servers, should rejoice that they are in the presence of Jesus, Pope Leo XIV said.

“But the Mass is also a serious, solemn moment, filled with reverence. May your posture, your silence, the dignity of your service, the beauty of the liturgy, the order and majesty of the gestures, help lead the faithful into the sacred grandeur of the mystery,” the pope said Aug. 25 during a meeting with more than 350 altar servers from 18 French dioceses.

The young men and women, between the ages of 12 and 20, were making a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome.

Reading his speech in French, Pope Leo asked the altar servers to “remain attentive to the call that Jesus might make to you to follow him more closely in the priesthood.”

“I speak to your young, enthusiastic and generous consciences,” he said, “and I will tell you something you must hear, even if it may trouble you a bit: the lack of priests in France, and in the world, is a great misfortune! A misfortune for the church.”

Pope Leo prayed that the young men would “discover the beauty, the joy and the need for such a vocation. What a wonderful life a priest has, meeting Jesus each day in such a unique way and bringing him to the world!”

During their pilgrimage to Rome, he said, each altar server should try to find “the time to speak to Jesus in the quiet of your heart and to love him more and more. His only desire is to be part of your life, to illuminate it from within, and to become your best and most faithful friend.”

“The most wonderful truth of our Catholic faith, something no one could have imagined or even hoped for,” he said, is that “God, the creator of heaven and earth, wanted to suffer and die for us creatures. God loved us to the point of death!”

And at every Mass, he said, the church “keeps and transmits” Christ’s sacrifice, “which you have the joy and honor of serving.”

“The Eucharist is the treasure of the church, the treasure of treasures,” he said.

“Dear altar servers, the celebration of the Mass saves us today! It saves the world today,” Pope Leo said. “It is the most important event in the life of a Christian and in the life of the church, because it is the moment when God gives himself to us in love, again and again.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Marking Ukraine’s Independence Day, Pope Leo XIV pledged his prayers for the Ukrainian people in a message to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and encouraged Catholics to respond to Ukrainian religious leaders’ request for prayers for peace Aug. 24.

“With a heart wounded by the violence that ravages your land, I address you on this day of your national feast,” he said in the message to Zelenskyy, which the president posted on X.

Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union on Aug. 24, 1991.

“I wish to assure you of my prayer for the people of Ukraine who suffer from war, especially for all those wounded in body, for those bereaved by the death of a loved one and for those deprived of their homes,” the pope wrote to the president.

Pope Leo prayed that God would console the Ukrainian people, “strengthen the injured and grant eternal rest to the departed.”

The pope also told the president he continued to pray that the Lord would “move the hearts of people of good will (so) that the clamor of arms may fall silent and give way to dialogue, opening the path to peace for the good of all.”

“I entrust your nation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Peace,” the pope wrote.

Zelenskyy, posting the pope’s message, thanked him “for his thoughtful words, prayer, and attention to the people of Ukraine amid devastating war. All of our hopes and efforts are for our nation to achieve the long-awaited peace. For good, truth, and justice to prevail. We appreciate @pontifex’s moral leadership and apostolic support.”

After reciting the Angelus prayer Aug. 24, Pope Leo also drew attention to the global prayer for Ukraine requested by the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religions.

“Today we join our Ukrainian brothers and sisters who, with the spiritual initiative ‘Global Prayer for Ukraine,’ ask the Lord to grant peace to their war-torn country,” the pope told thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (OSV News) – A deadly mass shooting took place the morning of Aug. 27 at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis shortly after the start of the school day during an all-school Mass at the adjacent Annunciation Catholic Church.

The gunman shot from the outside of the church through windows at the Mass attendees with a rifle, shotgun and pistol, killing two children, ages 8 and 10. According to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, 17 others are injured, including 14 children.

The suspected gunman is also dead and believed to have taken his own life in the parking lot. Local police say there is no longer an active threat.

The nearby Richfield Police Department stated earlier that “a man dressed in all black and armed with a rifle was reported at the scene.”

The shooter is yet to be publicly identified. O’Hara described the suspect as in his 20s and dressed in black. He said an apparent smoke bomb had also been found.

O’Hara confirmed that at least two of the church’s exterior doors had been barricaded with two-by-four wooden boards.

Aug. 27 was the third day of the school year for the Catholic elementary school, which serves students in preschool to grade eight. Students were attending an all-school Mass that began at 8:15 a.m. local time. Authorities were alerted at 8:27 a.m.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey joined O’Hara in speaking to media on the scene. Dr. Thomas Wyatt, chair of emergency medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center, a Level 1 trauma center in downtown Minneapolis, also provided reporters an update on victims’ status. He said 11 patients were taken to HCMC, among them two adults and nine children ages 6-14.

“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying,” Frey said.

Father Erich Rutten, pastor of nearby St. Thomas the Apostle Parish, arrived on scene this morning to pray with and comfort distraught and grieving parents at the school.

The priest told NBC News that parents were in “great, great anxiety and grief,” with some “wailing and crying, some stooping to the ground.”

He told the news outlet that he hugged those he recognized; several of them joined in as he prayed the rosary.

OSV News reached out to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and is awaiting comment. Staff from The Catholic Spirit, the archdiocese’s newspaper, were on the scene.

On its website, the archdiocese posted, “Please pray for all those affected by the shooting today at Annunciation in Minneapolis. Updates to come from The Catholic Spirit.”

Bishop Kevin T. Kenney, auxiliary bishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis who grew up attending Annunciation Parish, told a local news station that “it’s just unbelievable that this could happen, still today.”

It’s “very sad for the community, for the families, and very sad for the families who have lost loved ones,” said Bishop Kenney, speaking at HCMC.

“It’s a horrible, horrific way for all the students to begin the school year. Safety procedures were put in place, people come excited to go back to school, very excited about an academic year, feeling safe in south Minneapolis, and now look what happened,” he said.

“When I heard about the shooting this morning, I’m right down the street … I decided I better come over and just support the families and be here with them,” he said. “I have talked to a few (families) whose children are in surgery or being cared for. Just panicking, of course they’re in shock and worried, asking ‘why,’ so I’m just here to comfort … and to just walk with them in these hours ahead.”

Annunciation’s former interim pastor Father Robert Hart, 77, told NBC News that the shooting was “unbelievable.”

“It’s hard to believe that this could happen at a Catholic Mass,” he said. The priest described Annunciation as a “very close-knit and very supportive” community.

President Donald Trump said on the X social media platform that he has “been fully briefed” on the shooting.

“The FBI quickly responded and they are on the scene,” he said. “The White House will continue to monitor this terrible situation. Please join me in praying for everyone involved!”

Also on X, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said that he has been “briefed on a shooting at Annunciation Catholic School and will continue to provide updates as we get more information. The BCA and State Patrol are on scene. I’m praying for our kids and teachers whose first week of school was marred by this horrific act of violence.”

Kristi Noem, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said on X that “DHS is monitoring the horrific shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. We are in communication with our interagency partners, and will share more information as soon as it becomes available. I am praying for the victims of this heinous attack and their families.”

Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, asked for prayers on X.

“Friends, this morning there was a shooting at Annunciation Catholic Parish in Minneapolis. Please join me in praying for all those who were injured or lost their lives — along with their families,” he wrote. “Let us also pray for the students, faculty, and entire parish community,” he wrote.”

Bishop Patrick M. Neary of St. Cloud, Minnesota, also expressed his grief over the shooting.

“Today, our hearts are shattered by the horrific act of violence that occurred at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis. Children were gathered for Mass. Teachers were beginning a new school year. Families were entrusting their loved ones to the care of the Church,” he said in a statement.

“I grieve deeply with the families, students, staff and parishioners of Annunciation. I grieve with our neighbors in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. And I grieve with every person who now carries the trauma of this senseless violence.

“As Catholics, we believe in the dignity of every human life. That dignity is destroyed when violence becomes routine,” he continued. “May Christ, the Prince of Peace, bring healing to all who are wounded, and may Our Lady of Sorrows intercede for us in this time of grief.”

(OSV News) – A new statue depicting Blessed Carlo Acutis is a message that conveys to the world that the Catholic Church is not an old institution but a young and vibrant church with a relevant message for today’s culture, said the statue’s sculptor.

Unveiled Aug. 15 outside the Shrine of the Renunciation at the Church of St. Mary Major in Assisi, where the soon-to-be-saint is buried, Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz said that “the church is for the youth and it’s a growing church.”

“I know that Carlo Acutis mentioned that he wanted to be buried in Assisi. I’m sure he would be delighted to know that not only is his tomb there, but now there is a sculpture that celebrates him, cast in bronze, that will be there for more than a thousand years,” Schmalz said in an interview with OSV News Aug. 22.

The 11-foot-tall bronze statue, titled “St. Carlo at the Cross,” depicts the young teen, who will be canonized Sept. 7 by Pope Leo XIV, kneeling beside Christ crucified. Contrary to more classic depictions of saints, Blessed Acutis holds a laptop in his hand that displays a chalice and paten.

Before his death at age 15 from leukemia in 2006, Blessed Acutis put his knowledge of computers to create an online database of eucharistic miracles around the world.

“I wanted to do a very heroic, large sculpture to show the connection between the cross with Christ, Carlo Acutis, and modern-day technology. So there are three essential elements in there that kind of celebrate the story of this modern saint,” Schmalz explained.

“Oftentimes, when I do a sculpture of a saint, I’m using very historical elements that the saint holds. So I was like, ‘Whoa, here he is holding a laptop! I’m actually doing a sculpture of a saint holding a laptop!’ That was absolutely amazing,” he added.

Schmalz is known for several works that are displayed outside St. Peter’s Square, including “Angels Unawares,” a 20-foot bronze statue depicting a boat carrying migrants and refugees from different eras in history.

The late Pope Francis admired the artist’s work and, before his death in April, approved the installation of a second statue — titled “Be Welcoming” — near the showers and medical clinic the Vatican runs for people in need.

Schmalz told OSV News that the statue was initially set to be unveiled that month in Rome to coincide with the teen’s canonization. However, it was postponed due to the pope’s death, and the Vatican shipped the statue to its permanent home in Assisi.

Another unique feature of the sculpture is the inclusion of a sling hanging from the side of the teen’s backpack. The Canadian sculptor explained that its inclusion was a reference to David and Goliath, a connection he said “was revealed to me throughout the process of the piece.”

“As I was working on this, the David and Goliath story was always with me, about how here’s this young young man that’s in a sense using our modern-day sling — which is our technology — to fight this ‘Goliath’ of mainstream media that oftentimes trivializes spirituality, Christianity, and especially Catholicism,” he explained.

The new statue’s location in Assisi and its most notable saint, St. Francis, also factored into its design. The depiction of Blessed Acutis kneeling at the foot of the cross was a “kind of nod to the traditional representation of St. Francis with Jesus.”

“His head is leaning on the cross, and his hand is wrapped around the cross. He almost merges as a part of the cross, and I wanted that emotion to be put there. Yes, he’s on his knees showing his being a very humble person, but I think it’s the reaching of it, the wrapping of the hand, and the gentle leaning of his head on the cross,” the artist explained.

Blessed Acutis “was so much in love with St. Francis,” Schmalz said, adding that he was certain the teen “would appreciate these elements that are put within the sculpture.”

“I wanted to show that intensity and that passion and that devotion, just like St. Francis of Assisi,” he said.

Schmalz told OSV News that the modern elements included in the sculpture, as opposed to the more traditional, saintly garbs in other statues of saints, were an important feature that showed that Blessed Carlo Acutis is “a contemporary.”

“No Roman skirts; just jeans, a sweatshirt and a backpack,” he said. “So, I do believe that this saint is here for a reason, and it’s to encourage and act as a role model for young people.”

(OSV News) – In a well-circulated photo, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati appears to pause during a mountain hike and leans against his walking stick, smoking a pipe. His posture is relaxed and confident.

For many, the visual takeaway is that Frassati is someone they could imagine among their friends, a soon-to-be saint somehow like them.

“The No. 1 thing I get with Pier Giorgio is relatability,” said Christine Wohar, FrassatiUSA executive director. “He shows us how we can … be holy in the normalcy of our lives.”

He was attractive, manly, rugged, humorous and athletic, she noted. He was devoted to the Eucharist and Mary and time spent in adoration and praying the rosary. He came from a wealthy family, but was also committed to personal charity, as well as larger social causes and faith-based activism.

But, Wohar said, he also had relatable challenges: His parents’ marriage was on the verge of legal separation, he struggled to balance his studies with other commitments, he wrestled with whether to date a girl he loved, and he was misunderstood by family members.

Pope Leo XIV plans to canonize the Turin native, who died in 1925, alongside fellow Italian Blessed Carlo Acutis Sept. 7. The date is a month after the one originally indicated — but not solidified — in November 2024 by the late Pope Francis, who said that Frassati would be canonized during the Jubilee of Young People July 28-Aug. 3.

Wohar had planned a group pilgrimage for that celebration, and when the date shifted, it was too difficult to reschedule. So she and others spent late July and early August visiting Italy’s Frassati-related sites before attending Jubilee events in Rome. There they venerated Frassati’s relics in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, where his body had been temporarily relocated from Turin for the Jubilee celebration.

On that casket was inscribed, in his script, a phrase that many of his devotees have made their personal adage, stacked with spiritual meaning: “Verso l’alto” (“To the heights”). He wrote the phrase on another photo that had been taken of him mountaineering, gripping a rockface while looking towards the summit. It would be his last climb.

Pier Giorgio Michelangelo Frassati was born April 6, 1901, in Turin to Adelaide Ametis, a painter, and Alfredo Frassati, a newspaper businessman and politician who served as an Italian senator and ambassador to Germany. Even as a child, Pier Giorgio was engaged in Catholic groups and sought to receive daily Communion.

Fortified by a robust prayer life rooted in Marian devotion and the Eucharist, at age 17 he joined the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to care for the poor and the wounded soldiers returning home from World War I. He was known for giving money and his possessions to people in poverty, and even skipped vacations to the family’s summer home, saying, “If everybody leaves Turin, who will take care of the poor?”

His concern for marginalized and downtrodden people would persist throughout his short life. It influenced his decision to study mining engineering at Royal Polytechnic University of Turin, with the aim of ministering among the miners. Although he was smart, his studies suffered because of the amount of time he dedicated to helping the poor and political activism. In 1919, he joined Catholic Action, which promoted the church’s social teaching, especially as articulated in the 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” promulgated by Pope Leo XIII.

Two years later, he helped to organize in Ravenna the first Pax Romana conference, which aimed to unify Catholic university students to work for worldwide peace. In 1922, he joined the Lay Dominicans, also known as the Third Order of St. Dominic, choosing the name “Girolamo” after the fiery 15th-century Dominican preacher in Florence, Girolamo Savonarola.

Throughout his young adulthood, he was an avid outdoorsman and enjoyed skiing and mountaineering, art and music, and poetry and theater. He regularly gathered together his friends and was known to be a practical joker, shortening his friends’ bedsheets and waking them with trumpet blasts, ultimately earning the nickname “Fracassi,” as in “fracas” — a noisy disturbance.

“He knew how to have fun,” Wohar said. “He was an explosion of joy. He was the life of the party.”

But at church, he was reverent and composed, “all business with the Lord,” she added.

“He made religion look fun and attractive,” Wohar said. “Stories are told about how he would make wagers, and if he won that, his friends would have to go to adoration or Mass or pray the rosary or something. He believed that the apostolate of persuasion was the most beautiful and most necessary to help your friends find the ways of God.”

Frassati also engaged in actual fistfights for his faith-based political convictions — on more than one occasion — in scuffles with Communists, Fascists and crowd enforcement during activist rallies.

Amid his studies, social life and political activism, Frassati continued to take seriously his spiritual life, charitable works and evangelistic efforts, wasting no opportunity to invite his friends to join him in prayer, Scripture reading or at Mass.

An often overlooked aspect of Frassati was the attention he gave daily to death, Wohar said. He committed to making some preparation daily for his own death, saying that he was “ambitious” to meet God, even as his judge.

“He was mindful of his eternal future, and that really shaped how he lived his present,” she said. “He wrote beautiful letters about this. He visited one day somebody who had just died in the hospital, and he said, ‘This is what’s going to happen to me in just a short period of time,’ which was almost prophetic.”

In late June 1925, Frassati began to experience symptoms of polio, likely contracted while visiting Turin’s sick and poor. However, his grandmother was also dying at his home, so he downplayed his illness and focused on her, as did his family. She died July 3.

As his suffering worsened, his mind was also on his friends and the poor. He implored his sister, Luciana, to deliver medicine and other promised items to those in need whom he regularly visited. She recounted this in her book “My Brother Pier Giorgio: His Last Days.”

Pier Giorgio Frassati died July 4, 1925, at age 24, and his funeral was attended by hundreds of his city’s poor, revealing to many, especially his family members, the fullness of his charity. He was initially buried in the family crypt in the nearby city of Pollone, but his body was moved to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin after his beatification in 1990.

At Frassati’s beatification, St. John Paul II described him as a “man of the beatitudes.”

“In him faith and daily events are harmoniously fused, so that adherence to the Gospel is translated into loving care for the poor and the needy in a continual crescendo until the very last days of the sickness which led to his death,” the pope said.

“His love for beauty and art, his passion for sports and mountains, his attention to society’s problems did not inhibit his constant relationship with the Absolute,” he continued. “Entirely immersed in the mystery of God and totally dedicated to the constant service of his neighbor: thus we can sum up his earthly life!”

While a cause for Frassati’s canonization opened shortly after his death, it stalled for a time. Wohar said she believes that his canonization this year — a century after his death — is part of God’s plan.

“The Lord, in his wisdom, knew we needed a Pier Giorgio Frassati, a St. Frassati, for a time like we live in now,” she said.

“If he had been canonized, say, in the 1940s, we might never even have him on our radar,” she continued. “He would have maybe gone into obscurity as one of the many, many, many Italian saints. The fact that he is being canonized in this Jubilee Year of hope, when we need hope in our culture, I think he presents a picture of hope for young adults — for everybody, but particularly for that age range.”

She added, “It’s God’s perfect timing.”