Nothing says “pilgrimage, not holiday” more than sleeping on the floor of an airport. The night before my early flight to Rome for the canonisation of our two newest saints, there was a certain sense of silent solidarity between all those who, for one reason or another, had to find somewhere comfortable, or tolerable, to wait out the small hours in the small airport of Brussels Charleroi.
Another early rise was the following morning too, since even hours before the canonisation Mass crowds already were filling the streets around St Peter’s Square – some people had camped outside all night in order to beat the crowds – so it was with bleary eyes that I shuffled through the security checks, past the great columns and into the embrace of St Peter’s Square that morning.
Though I hadn’t been there before in my adult life, St Peter’s still somehow gives the sense of both arriving at the centre of the world, and of coming home. You’re surrounded on all sides by saints, both the statues watching over the square, and the actual living kinds too. There’s a certain kind of person that comes to these events, and however diverse the crowd may be, they’re all there for the same reason. Most were Italians, though I saw a lot of Bavarian flags also, and many had travelled from further abroad: there were representatives of a parish named after Carlo Acutis somewhere in the United States, and I even befriended a Baptist Christian from Brazil who had come for the event.
Judging by the number of people wearing Carlo Acutis hats and t-shirts or waving Carlo Acutis banners, I would say that most people had come for the younger of the two saints. I was there for the mountain-climber from Turin, though.
Giorgio
So, who is Pier Giorgio Frassati? In short, he was an incredibly vigorous young guy. Reading accounts of him, you get the sense that he was constantly at the ready to swim ten miles and climb a mountain; people seem to remember him as a sort of rambunctious hurricane, known for his loud and bad singing, his stubbornness and fight, and often compared to the sun walking into the room because of his irrepressible good humour and constant high spirits. His parents weren’t very religious except at a surface level- much like the society of the time.
Feats that would have exhausted others seemed to leave Pier Giorgio totally unbothered”
He lived something of a double life: on one hand, as the son of Alfredo Frassati — a wealthy, modern, liberal senator and journalist, vigorous and efficient, who, despite often misunderstanding his son, loved him deeply and passed on many of his famous traits; and on the other, as a man of faith, which Pier Giorgio embraced spontaneously and with the same enthusiasm he gave to alpine climbing, skiing, sailing, horseback riding, and the many pursuits he somehow fit into his short life.
Feats that would have exhausted others seemed to leave Pier Giorgio totally unbothered. Cristina Siccardi recounts in her biography Pier Giorgio Frassati: A Hero for Our Times that, as a teenager helping out on his grandmother’s estate, he used to bicycle “for fifty-three miles from Turin to Pollone and then return without batting an eye. At the end of such an enormous effort, instead of throwing himself down on his bed or taking a nice invigorating bath, he would start pacing back and forth in the house declaiming verses from Dante or passages from Hamlet. In Revenna, his friends heard him recite whole cantos from The Divine Comedy… He used to organise competitions to see who could dive the deepest. He would jump out of the boat far from the shore and then surface again with a handful of sand, proving that he had reached the bottom.” His mother even recounts a terrifying bumpy drive she went on with him behind the wheel – he was only 14!
Energy
It was with the very same energy that he took up the Christian life. You get the impression that he joined almost every Catholic youth club or movement that there was – most especially Catholic Action, the society of St Vincent de Paul, and the Third Order Lay Dominicans, taking the name of the famous, fiery, and controversial preacher Girolamo Savonarola. Most famously, he also gave constantly to the poor. When he disagreed with the decision made at his St Vincent de Paul club, not to give more than the agreed amount to any poor person, he simply gave any extra he thought was needed from his own pockets. He got into trouble for taking flowers from his father’s house to put on the graves of the poor.
His deeds didn’t even end with his death from polio at 24, caught from his insistence on helping the poor during the polio epidemic of his day. He reportedly played FIFA on the PlayStation with Kevin Baker, a American teenager whom I saw give his testimony in person, during the latter’s coma and subsequent miraculous recovery, one of the Papal-approved miracles attributed to Pier Giorgio’s intercession which led to the canonisation.
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, and that as Saints they may be invoked by all the Christian faithful”
This was the great man who I had travelled to St Peter’s that morning to see ‘raised to the altars.’ The pristine marble of St Peter’s stood against the spotless blue sky, and the rising sun made the face of that great Church-front glow with a golden-orange.
The crowds, myself, and my Baptist Brazilian friend, as well as a lot of giddy Italian teenagers, and some Benedictine and Mother Teresa sisters from India, watched Pope Leo – his first canonisation – in the distance come out onto the altar raised up in front of the basilica, and heard the words of canonisation, which are quite striking: the prefect for the dicastery saints addresses the Pope: “Most Holy Father, Holy Mother Church beseeches Your Holiness to enrol among the Saints, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, and that as Saints they may be invoked by all the Christian faithful.
Legacy
After the litany of the Saints, the Pope responds: “For the honour of the Blessed Trinity, the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of the Christian life, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and our own, after due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother Bishops, we declare and define Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis to be Saints and we enrol them among the Saints, decreeing that they are to be venerated as such by the whole Church. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
We may be afraid of what will happen if we give our all to Christ, fearing we will lose the best parts of life”
The keys to the Kingdom indeed! During this part, the cameras were trained on the mother of Carlo Acutis, looking grave and deeply moved, who was there attending the canonisation of her son. Pier Giorgio’s sister Luciana was there too, now an old lady and full of days at 97.
Then came the rest of the Mass; Carlo’s brother, born four years to the day after his death, read the first reading. The Gospel, you will recall, was of Jesus’ dire charge that we hate our own lives, renounce everything, take up our Cross and follow Him. Does this seem a bit of a downer of a Gospel, compared with the bounding, triumphant, joyful victory of the lives of these two young saints? Well, in fact, it’s very fitting.
Pope Leo explained in his homily: Jesus “calls us to abandon ourselves without hesitation to the adventure he offers us… For every saint, it all began when, while still young, they said “yes” to God and gave themselves to him completely, keeping nothing for themselves.”
I was reminded of John Paul II’s famous quote: “If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing, of what makes life free, beautiful and great.”
That is the lesson of these two saints. We may be afraid of what will happen if we give our all to Christ, fearing we will lose the best parts of life and end up somewhat impoverished. No: Pier Giorgio, with Carlo, shows us just what life with Christ looks like. Our Lord said: “I have come that you may have life, and have it overflowingly”, and overflowing life is exactly what characterised the life of Pier Giorgio. As Pope Leo said, they are “an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces.”
His deeds didn’t even end with his death from polio at 24, caught from his insistence on helping the poor during the polio epidemic of his day”
