Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati chose me! So writes Marco DeCapite, Technology Director for the Diocese of Lansing, in the wake of yesterday’s canonization of Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901 – 1925), a young Italian Catholic activist and Third Order Dominican. Marco is also the President and Founder of VersAlta Mission Solutions, an IT company named after Pier Giorgio’s saintly rallying cry: “Verso l'alto! Toward the heights!” Marco begins his own story in Europe over 35 years ago. He writes:
On a family trip to Italy in May 1990, when I was 21, my mother found out "some young Italian guy” was getting beatified. I knew nothing about him but I do remember seeing some mountain-guy on a poster, and the pope in the distance. The extent of my Catholicism at that time was meeting my weekly Sunday obligation.
Mary grabbed me in 1994, and brought me to Medjugorje, and that ignited a hunger and passion for my faith. In 1999, I met the woman who would become my wife, who was living in Denver at the time. With our marriage, we started our new life together there. It was in Denver that I heard about a "Frassati Society", and the parish where I got involved with Young Adult ministry had a "Frassati Room." The name rang a bell but I thought I, maybe, had it confused with the Italian wine, Frascati (My father was a wine retailer).
I only brought the basics with me to Denver, but I had a bookshelf, and one day, the name Frassati on my bookshelf caught my eye, and it was then I realized that I had attended Pier Giorgio’s beatification! So now I had to read his story and discovered the first book written by his sister, Luciana Frassati, "A Man of the Beatitudes." That book truly introduced me to Pier Giorgio, and I began to understand why he chose me... in many ways, my entire life and upbringing parallelled his. My father was a business owner. My mother, in my early upbringing, was more of a cultural Catholic (although her faith journey deepened alongside my own). I saw a similar father-son relationship.
But Pier Giorgio witnessed to me as a young adult – and even as an older adult – how to strive to live as a Catholic in the modern world. Here was a joyful, playful, average college student. He wasn't the best academically, but he worked at it. He was athletic, a mountain climber, soccer player, skier, and just a natural leader. He didn't let his upbringing define him. He identified first as a child of God, whose full duty was to live in service to others. He didn't make a big show of it, and it wasn't about him. In fact, no one really knew how much of a servant he was until he died at the young age of 24.
I often say that if I could be half the man now that Pier Giorgio was at 24, I'd at least know I was making progress towards my eternal goal.
Pope Saint John Paul II called Pier Giorgio the patron saint for youth and young adults in the new Millennium. Now, with the canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis, I believe we will now have a bit more clarity that Pier Giorgio will best set a role model for young adults, with Carlo doing likewise for the youth.
What truly brought me to tears, however, was reading Luciana Frassati's second book, "My Brother Pier Giorgio: His Last Days." This is where Pier Giorgio's complete selflessness, humility, silent suffering, and love for other's shines brightest. He starts out slightly ill (with undiagnosed Polio at first), and his family are frustrated with him because his grandmother had just passed, and they perceived he wasn't "helping", dismissing any of his flu-like symptoms (which he was trying to keep to himself). When they realize how sick he truly is, and he's finally diagnosed with Polio, it's too late to treat it. Barely able to move, in his last act before he dies, he asks his sister for a pen and paper. Barely able to lift the pen. He scribbles a note to purchase medications for someone in the slums of Turin and put it on his account.
Upon his death, there is a major state funeral, as his father was not only president and editor-in-chief of the main newspaper in Turin, but he was also an Italian diplomat to Germany. The funeral is then flooded by people from the slums to honor this young man. The family was stunned at the outpouring of support from these complete strangers to them, completely unaware of how many lives Pier Giorgio touched. This is the ultimate in Christian witness. It wasn't about him. When a close friend asked him about why he going was going to the slums, he said, "Jesus comes to me every day in Holy Communion and I repay him in my very small way by visiting the poor”.
So, what inspires me about Pier Giorgio?
1) That he was surrounded by materialism and wealth, yet he remained completely detached from it, even to the point of when his dad bought him a car, he turned around and sold it, to give the money to the poor.
2) At that time, daily communion was not a common practice, but he was encouraged to do so by a Jesuit priest at his school when he was 12. When he convinced his reluctant mother after pleading for four days, he told his priest with the excitement as if he won the lottery, "Father, I have won! .... I can now receive Jesus every morning!"
3) His love for the Lord, especially in the Eucharist, was also demonstrated later in his life when he would join multiple all-night adoration sessions.
4) The natural and non-confrontational way that he witnessed to his love for God, the Church and the poor. Examples include:
After a friend teases him as he was praying a Rosary outside one day, "Pier Giorgio, you're becoming a fanatic", he replies, "Nah, I'm just remaining a Christian”.
Another friend invites him to go out to a bar, and he turns and says, "Hey... I've got a much better place for a drink... " and he takes his friend to Mass.
When asked by a friend how to overcome revulsion and tolerate the "foul smells" of the slums he visited, the reply was: "The house may be sordid, but it is to Christ we are going .... All around the sick and all around the poor I see a special light which has nothing to do with either riches or health"
5) His love for God's creation in nature, the mountains, and pursuing "the heights" – Verso l'alto! Toward the heights!
6) His willingness to confront societal evils... as he battled against both communism and fascism, one time even taking a Catholic banner knocked down by police and using it to fend them off.
There are so many facets to Pier Giorgio's Christian witness that resonate in a highly divided modern world. I pray his canonization will help inspire many more to discover him and seek love and peace that only comes through the kind of relationship that Saint Pier Giorgio had with Our Lord.
