A new canonization for a member of the Dominican Family: Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. In his general audience on 20 November 2024, Pope Francis announced that this event will take place as part of the Jubilee of Young People, as the highlight of the summer days dedicated to young people during the coming Holy Year.
The young student from Turin, already beatified in 1990, will therefore be counted among the saints with an official recognition by the Church: this act has a universal value and extends his public cult to the entire Church throughout the world.
Pier Giorgio Frassati, was born in Turin in 1901 and died there in 1925. He lived in a wealthy family with his mother Adelaide, his father Alfredo (senator, founder, and director of the newspaper La Stampa, and then, for a short time, Italian ambassador to Berlin) and his sister Luciana. While his schooling took him as far as the Faculty of Engineering, Pier Giorgio grew up in the Christian faith by participating in the many activities that were taking place in the Catholic Turin of his time. He cultivated his union with God through daily prayer and the sacraments and sought to deepen his education by reading the writings of great authors of the Christian tradition.
In his personal search for truth, Pier Giorgio met the Dominican friars of the convent of San Domenico in Turin: Reginaldo Giuliani, the two brothers Filippo and Francesco Robotti, Enrico Ibertis, and others. In his brief earthly life, the young man from Turin actively participated in various Catholic groups, including the Partito Popolare Italiano, Azione Cattolica, and the Federation of Italian Catholic Universities. However, among all his memberships, it was only in the Dominican Third Order that Pier Giorgio chose to commit himself with a formal “profession.”
Talking with the Dominican friars, he discovers the ideal of the Order of Preachers: preaching, that is, speaking about God, for the eternal salvation of souls. He lives it not as a friar but as a young layman, engaged in the world but aware that God is calling him to holiness.
The Dominican Third Order (now known as the Dominican Laity) became for the young Frassati the environment in which he could grow in goodness: a place to know the Lord and share Him with others, always with joy and a desire to give of himself to those in need. Starting in the spring of 1922, Pier Giorgio was gradually welcomed into the fraternity of the Dominican Tertiaries, where he promised to faithfully live the simple commitments of prayer and formation required of the Tertiaries in our Order.
Captivated by the figure of the founder St. Dominic and an assiduous reader of the works of St. Catherine of Siena, on entering Dominican life Pier Giorgio chose for himself the name “Brother Jerome.” He explains this clearly to friars and friends: this is the name of Jerome Savonarola, the courageous 15th-century Dominican preacher who, though misunderstood by many, wanted to establish justice in the city and build a society consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is also the ideal of Frassati, who enthusiastically committed himself as a Catholic to politics, and at the same time brought his discreet and silent concrete help to the most abandoned and lonely people.
With joy, Pier Giorgio knows how to be a true friend to his peers, sharing with them the beauty of the Christian faith through play, joyful mountain trips, and his commitment to study. But, with some of them, he also shares the deeper sense of belonging to the Dominicans: he invites them to join the Third Order, to which he has already joyfully committed, so they too can experience the same joy. The prayer he lives through daily Mass, adoration of the Eucharist, the recitation of the Rosary, and the reading of great Dominican authors are the spiritual treasures that lead the young Frassati to give himself each day, both in the company of his friends and in helping those who suffer, forgotten by the world.
In his final months, Pier Giorgio acquired books to learn more about the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, which fascinated him. But his earthly life was drawing to a close: after a brief illness, on 4 July 1925, he entered into the eternal joy of the Lord he had always sought.
With the canonization of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, the Church presents the example of a young man who followed the Lord to the end and entrusted himself to His intercession. For us Dominicans, there is also the joy of knowing that a friend of ours from a hundred years ago, who as a young layman shared our ideal of life, supports us with his prayers and awaits us in the joy of Paradise.
Brother Massimo Mancini OP
Postulator General of the Order of Preachers
