Today, July 4, is the memorial of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati.
In 1901, Pier Giorgio Frassati was born to a wealthy and politically influential family. His mother was the painter Adelaide Ametis while his father was an agnostic, the founder and editor of the liberal newspaper La Stampa who became the Italian ambassador to Germany.
Pier Giorgio was already known for being religious. He was popular for his athletic skills and mountain-climbing expertise.
He was nicknamed “Terror” because he loved to prank people and perform practical jokes on them.
He was tutored at home for years with his younger sister Luciana. He studied minerology in an engineering program after graduating high school.
He worked often with Catholic groups like Apostleship of Prayer and the Company of the Most Blessed Sacrament that ministered to the poor and promoted Eucharistic adoration, Marian devotion, and personal chastity. He became involved in political groups like the Young Catholic Workers Congress, the Popular Party, the Catholic Student Federation, Catholic Action and Milites Mariae that supported the poor, opposed fascism and worked for the Church‘s social teachings.
He was a Dominican tertiary who enjoyed reading the works of St. Catherine of Siena and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Instead of spending his wealth on material things, he spent his riches providing for the poor and visiting the sick. It was because of his ministry that he contracted the disease that killed him.
He died at age 24 in 1925. Huge crowds, mostly the poor he helped, attended his funeral.
Pope St. John Paul II beatified him in 1990.