Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati could be declared a saint during the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year, according to the head of the Vatican’s office for saints’ causes.
Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, announced on 26 April during Catholic Action’s national assembly that Frassati’s canonisation is “on the horizon”, reports the Catholic News Agency (CNA), citing an article in Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference.
“I would like to tell you that the canonisation of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati is now clearly on the horizon and is in sight for the coming Jubilee Year,” the cardinal said at the assembly held in Sacrofano, Italy.
Frassati, who died at the age of 24 in 1925, was a third order Dominican known for his charitable outreach and an avid mountaineer. On a photograph of what would be his last climb, Frassati wrote the phrase “Verso L’Alto”, which means “to the heights”.
The phrase has become a motto for Catholics inspired by Frassati to strive for the summit of eternal life with Christ, reports CNA. It highlights that Frassati is particularly popular among young Catholics today due to his enthusiastic witness to holiness that reaches “to the heights”.
At the age of 17, the young man from the northern Italian city of Turin joined the St. Vincent de Paul Society and dedicated much of his spare time to taking care of the poor, the homeless and the sick, as well as demobilised servicemen returning from World War I.
At an early age, Frassati also joined the Marian Sodality and the Apostleship of Prayer, obtaining permission to receive daily Communion, which was rare at the time.
Reportedly only an average student at school, Frassati was considered extraordinary in his “ordinariness”, notes the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB). It adds that his motto of “Verso L’Alto” has since come to encapsulate his philosophy of mountaineering and his Catholic outlook on life and adventure.
His buccaneering example is held up as a counter to the stereotype that saints are shy reclusive people who disdain this life while pining for the next world.
Frassati died of polio on 4 July 1925. His doctors later speculated that the young man had caught polio while serving the sick.
Pope John Paul II, who beatified Frassati in 1990, called him a “man of the Eight Beatitudes”, describing him as “entirely immersed in the mystery of God and totally dedicated to the constant service of his neighbour”.
For Frassarti to be canonised as a saint in the Catholic Church, a miracle attributed to his intercession will need to be officially recognised in a decree signed by the Pope.
“Remember that for God, you are not a digital profile, but a child, that you have a Father in heaven and therefore you are a child of heaven,” the Pope said, adding that young people must let themselves be picked up in a world that often wants to pull them down.
“In naming Frassati as one of their primary patrons, the Church has given youth and young adults an excellent role model for their own journey,”says the USCCB. “Just like Frassati, young people continually set out on a voyage in their everyday lives ‘to the heights’ to encounter Christ in all things, and in a particular way, through the community of the Church and the Holy Eucharist.”
Photo: Young pilgrims pray in front of the relics of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, which were brought to St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney for World Youth Day (WYD), a celebration of the Catholic Faith which draws young people from around the world, 14 July 2008. (Photo credit: VINCENZO PINTO/AFP via Getty Images.)
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