During the first saint-making Mass of his pontificate, Pope Leo canonized Carlo Acutis, the “patron saint of computer geeks”, a young man who died at the age of fifteen after living a virtuous life.
Carlo Acutis gained significant media attention, but Pope Leo also canonized who died young, Pier Giorgio Frassati.
Virtually unknown in the rest of the world, he is however popular in Italy.
Pier Giorgio Michelangelo Frassati was born in Turin, 1901, the son of a painter and a newspaper director. His influential father was also an Italian Senator and Ambassador to Germany.
He showed a preocuppation with faith at an early age, joining various religious societies as a teen, and dedicating much of his spare time to serving the sick and the needy, caring for orphans as well as soldiers come home from the First World War. He gave even his bus fare to charity, took communion daily, and prayed nightly.
Frassati studied mining engineering at the Royal Polytechnic University of Turin.
He became a very active member of the People’s Party, which promoted the Catholic Church’s social teaching based on the principles of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum, which addressed the condition of the working class (this is telling also of current Pope Leo’s choice to take the name of Leo).
Frassati was also central to organizing 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.
Like many spiritual leaders, he was an avid mountain climber, a lover of Dante, and, influenced by Saint Paul, Savonarola, and Saint Catherine, joined the Lay Dominicans, taking a name after Savonarola.
His powerful anti-fascist views were also an important element in his canonization, what with the Vatican’s appeal towards the younger generation.
Just before receiving his university degree, Pier Giorgio took ill with poliomyelitis, probably through his charitable work. He died at the age of 24 in 1925. His last wish, written with a polio-paralyzed hand, was for medicine to be taken to a poor man he had been tending to.
His funeral was attended by entire streets of mourners.
Pope John Paul II, after visiting his original tomb in the family plot in Pollone, said in 1989: “I wanted to pay homage to a young man who was able to witness to Christ with singular effectiveness in this century of ours. 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.”
His reportedly immaculate remains were then transferred to the Turin Cathedral.
In 1990, Pope John Paul II beatified Pier Giorgio Frassati, calling him the “Man of the Eight Beatitudes.”
Now, new Pope Leo chose to sanctify him together with the more popular Carlo Acutis.
“The greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan,” Leo said in his homily. The new saints “are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces.”
This was a long-approved Vatican plan, put together by the late Pope Francis, and attended by hundreds of bishops, as well as many young families in Saint Peter’s Square.
