Pope Leo's First Saints

Reflections on a brilliant day at the Vatican

In some way, today felt like the real start of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate. In 25 years of covering Popes I have rarely seen St. Peter’s Square so alive and a Pope so engaged with the faithful. The canonization of Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, the first saints canonized by Leo, seemed to have something Providential about it.

The Pope did not choose to have these two young men as the first that he would make saints, of course. Acutis was due to be canonized on the day of Pope Francis’ funeral in April and so had to be moved. Frassati was already on the calendar, originally for August 3^rd until he was moved to be canonized together with Acutis. So it was a logistical thing. But Providence works with logistics too and it felt right that these two young men, outstanding examples of steadfast interior grace combined with authentic goodness and vitality, should be canonized by our new Pope whose still-young pontificate seems to be highlighting these same virtues.

About 15 minutes before the Mass began, with thousands still streaming down the Via della Conciliazione under a blazing sun, Pope Leo broke with tradition and surprised us all by coming out to the altar on St. Peter’s Square to say a few words. He thanked the priests and bishops for being there and asked for applause for them. He told the faithful that Frassati and Acutis were examples of love for Jesus through devotion to the Eucharist and to the poor. “We are all called to be saints!” he said to applause.

For context, Vatican events are run like clock-work, there is lots to do behind-the-scenes bringing out dignitaries, seating everyone and getting the show on the road. The Pope does not come out before it’s time. Unless he wants to, of course. So Leo’s spontaneity suggests to me an ease in his role that reminded me of John Paul II.

Of the two saints canonized today, Pier Giorgio Frassati is perhaps less well-known.

I have long had a personal interest in Pier Giorgio because when I first moved to Rome from Oxford some 25 years ago, I lived with his great-niece, Orsola, whom I’m happy to say is still my friend today.

More on that story below but first let me tell you about Pier Giorgio, a handsome, vibrant young man who died young, one hundred years ago in 1925.

He was from a prominent, wealthy family in Turin. His father was an Italian Senator, the owner of an important Italian newspaper, La Stampa, and also served for a time as Ambassador to Germany. Pier Giorgio was his only and first-born son.

A daughter, Luciana, was born a year later and is mostly responsible for having documented her brother’s short but extraordinary life which led to his beatification and now canonization. Luciana died in 1997 at the age of 105, having married a Polish aristocrat, Jan Gawronski and raised 5 children and countless grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Luciana tells the story in her book, Pier Giorgio Frassati, The Days of His Life, of her adventurous brother who from a young age and much to her parents’ chagrin was not interested in the trappings of their upper-class life nor in following in the illustrious footsteps of their father at the newspaper or in political life.

What Pier Giorgio had, and everyone around him recognized, was a tremendous inner light. A grace that held him in deep communion with God and gave vitality to all of his interactions, which were especially aimed at assisting the poor and working for social justice on their behalf. People flocked to Pier Giorgio, attracted by this light and his incessant activity in favor of helping soldiers returning from World War I or organizing students politically in favor of the downtrodden and working classes. He was a force of nature.

His parents were appalled at their son who gave away his good clothes and dressed in rags; who refused to attend fancy dinners because he was out working with miners; who rode in third class train compartments in order to give the extra money away; who came home late because he was in Church for hours in adoration before the Eucharist.

“When Pier Giorgio is 40, he won’t have half the good sense of Luciana,” his mother said, exasperated by her flighty son who didn’t spend much time studying and seemed to let money slip through his hands.

Luciana recounts in her book the endless torment from her parents towards their son whom they could not understand and the great patience and love which Pier Giorgio managed to show them nonetheless. It was Luciana, who understood her brother’s great spiritual gifts and took umbrage at their condescending treatment of him.

Yet even his parents were forced to admit eventually that there was something special about Pier Giorgio.

“I always told him that he was wasting time, without knowing all of the good that he was doing and even when I did know of it, I didn’t appreciate it,” his mother said after her son’s premature death from polio at 24.

“He not only accepted my criticisms but he didn’t even try to defend himself,” she said.

Luciana recalls her father telling a colleague: “Something about Pier Giorgio makes me feel like he is greater than me, older, wiser. I don’t know what it is, but he instills a sense of awe in me.”

That sense of awe that the elder Frassati felt from his son was surely an intimation of Pier Giorgio’s unique grace, his gift, of interior light.

Pier Giorgio once said, “Around the poor and the sick, I see a light that we do not have,” as Pope Leo recalled in his homily at the canonization.

It is this light, this divine spark, that we are all after and the saints help us to find it.

Pier Giorgio represents the best of what youth can be: prayerful, active, magnanimous, sporty and joyful. He loved the mountains and the outdoors, he was at once a charismatic leader of his group of friends and a reserved gentleman with a strong interior life. He did not allow the heaviness of life – the political turbulence of World War I or familial strain with his parents who had high societal expectations of their only son – to weigh down his good-nature and his plans.

It seems to me that in a world where our young people are taxed with all kinds of soul-destroying ideas, activities, images, Pier Giorgio represents a wholesomeness of friendship, generosity, simplicity of a life lived in contact with God, nature and those in need.

There is something super-abundant about these young saints, whose lives speak to a supernatural grace that allowed them to develop a strong focus on the Lord, a confidence in their path and a total self-effacement in service to others.

What better example can we have for young people, and indeed older ones, in today’s materialistic world?

La Virgola Luna

Orsola’s apartment was on the top floor of a beautiful street in Rome overlooking St. Peter’s Basilica. A wide balcony wrapped around it on all sides. The living room was empty except for a massive grand piano.

My room consisted of a mattress on top of a wire cot and a bookshelf with a picture of a young man smoking a pipe on a mountain top and books written by one Luciana Frassati.

There was no television in the house and the Internet hadn’t yet been invented so I spent my evenings browsing Luciana’s books.

I did not yet speak Italian so I chose her poetry books because the writing was less dense and I could look up the words. I still remember one of her lines about the new moon, which she likened to a comma calling it la virgola luna. I still think of it every time I see a new moon.

I would eventually come to know the story of Luciana’s brother, Pier Giorgio, and indeed meet Luciana herself, a brilliant and formidable woman who died at the age of 105.

I could not know then that 25 years later I would be living in my own beautiful house overlooking St Peter’s Basilica writing about the young man whose picture kept me company in that spare little room and his sister whose poetry was my first introduction to Italian.

Providence indeed.