Halos for two: Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 21, 2024

As we reported on Wednesday, the canonization of both Pier Giorgio Frassati (†1925) and Carlo Acutis (†2006) have been approved and scheduled. Blessed Pier Giorgio will be canonized during the Jubilee for Youth (July 28 to August 3 in 2025) and Blessed Carlo during the Jubilee for Teenagers in St. Peter’s Square on April 27, 2025. The first died at the age of 24 and the second at 15.

Since Carlo Acutis died relatively recently, most readers will have heard of the many books published about his life by Catholic outlets such as the Vatican Press, Magnificat, Ignatius Press, Our Sunday Visitor, Sophia Institute, Pauline Books and Media, and the Catholic Truth Society. A similar range of books has been published on Blessed Pier Giorgio by Ignatius, TAN Books, Pauline, and Alba House, among others.

Clearly one of the things that make these two figures so widely popular is how far they had progressed along the path to holiness by the time they died at such young ages. For this reason, there has also been a significant effort to aim the books about them at comparatively young readers. But just because awareness of these two men is comparatively widespread does not mean that most of us know the outline of their lives.

Pier Giorgio Frassati (April 6, 1901–July 4,1925)

Pier Giorgio was born in Italy back when it was still a kingdom. His father was a senator and ambassador who owned a major newspaper, La Stampa, and his mother an artist who was also from a wealthy background. Yet from an early age, Pier Giorgio had a keen desire to help the poor. Indeed, as a child, when a poor woman with a young son came to the door begging, Pier took off his shoes and gave them to the boy. He was also known in his youth for his practical jokes. For such rough-and-ready decisiveness, he was nicknamed “The Terror”.

Educated by the Jesuits, Pier was very active in social work and decisively opposed to Fascism. In his student days he participated in both Catholic Action and the Apostleship of Prayer. In due course he joined the Third Order of St. Dominic, taking the name Girolamo from the fiery fifteenth-century Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola, who was an immense counterweight to secularism in Renaissance Florence (and, incidentally, on whom I wrote my college senior thesis at, of all places, Rutgers University*).

Frassati was devoted to other great Dominicans as well, such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Catherine of Siena. He loved St. Paul, too, but I doubt he claimed him as a Dominican. In any case, he was a man of action, insisting that “Charity is not enough; we need social reform”. And so he launched a newspaper (Momento) which derived its interests and emphases from Pope Leo XIII’s great inaugural social encyclical, Rerum Novarum (see the text and the audiobooks).

In any case, Pier Giorgio became a mining engineer, the better to evangelize among miners, and he gave the substantial gift he received upon graduation to the poor. Sadly, while boating on the Po River on June 30,1925, he developed a headache and fever. Becoming steadily weaker, he was diagnosed with polio, which took his life within a week.

The progress of his cause was interesting. After it was initiated by the Archbishop of Turin in 1932, rumors were spread that Frassati had frequently gone hiking in the mountains with suspiciously bad company. Fortunately, an intervention by his sister gave the lie to any such thing. The cause progressed, and John Paul II declared him Venerable in 1987, and beatified him on May 20, 1990.

Carlo Acutis (May 3, 1991–10/12/2006)

The life of Carlo Acutis is probably better known today than any other roughly contemporary saint. Born in London, Carlo’s father’s family was in the insurance business, and his mother’s in publishing. Before long the family relocated to Milan. Unfortunately, both parents were rather secularized Catholics who rarely even attended Mass. But Carlo’s youthful questions and decided interest brought them back to the practice of their Faith. In addition, a household worker from India, a Brahmin, along with his mother, converted to Catholicism largely through the influence of young Carlo.

As a little boy, he was cared for mostly by nannies, and was often bullied. When he was advised to stand up for himself, he responded: “Jesus would not be happy if I lost my temper.” A very average student, he was educated by the Sisters of St. Marcellina and then attended a Jesuit high school. His heroes became Francis of Assisi, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, Dominic Savio, Tarcisius, Bernadette Soubirous, and Mary Magdalene de’Pazzi, not to mention St. Michael the Archangel.

It was common in those days for youngsters to be catechized by other youngsters, and Carlo became a catechist at the age of 12. Then the local priest asked him to create a web page for the parish when he was 14. Later, his high school asked him to do the same thing, in order to promote volunteering for good causes. Honing his skills, Carol also worked for several years on a website to promote Eucharistic miracles and approved Marian apparitions. In this he was inspired by the emphasis placed on the media by Blessed Giacomo Alberione, founder of the Paulists and the Daughters of St. Paul. He involved his whole family in this project, which finally opened online to the public in 2006, just days before his death.

By October 1, 2006, Carlo was sick. The disease progressed rapidly and was diagnosed as acute promyelocytic leukemia (a cancer of the white blood cells). Today 90 percent of these cases go into remission, and about 80 percent are cured, at least among low-risk patients. But for Carlo, the disease progressed into coma, intensive care, attempts at blood-cleansing, cerebral hemorrhage, and death within a week.

Carlo very much wished to be buried in Assisi, so his body was moved there in 2019. It was encased in wax (not uncommon for persons who may be frequently viewed), but it is not incorrupt. Since his subsequent beatification in 2020 (after a miracle was authenticated in 2019), Carlo’s interest in promoting Eucharistic miracles has led to a traveling exhibition promoting such miracles, under his patronage, in which Carlo’s mother participates.

Speaking of his mother, I close by noting that, four years to the day after Carlo’s death as an only child, his mother gave birth to twins.

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* Of which the most humorous aspect was my assumption, in reading Savonarola’s sermons regarding the invasion of the King of France, that the fiery Dominican was claiming that the people would be “amazed”. In fact, however, the Italian verb ammazzare (as was pointed out by my thesis director) means “to kill”. Talk about picky!