It was recently announced that Pier Giorgio Frassati would be canonized in the 2025 Jubilee Year. While the announcement is recent, Pier Giorgio has been recognized as a holy man for years, and he has even inspired other saints such as Pope John Paul II.
Pope John Paul II said he found Pier Giorgio very inspiring during his college years and named him the “man of the beatitudes” for his devout service to the poor. Pope Francis also admires Pier Giorgio, listing him among the twelve exemplary saints for the youth.
It’s easy to see why he is so lauded. Pier Giorgio lived a short but thriving layman’s life, dedicating every aspect of it to God. He practiced many of the everyday Catholic habits, such as going to Adoration often, staying in touch with Mother Mary and attending Mass nearly every day.
However, he lived very radically in other ways. Pier Giorgio had a great devotion to the poor, going so far as to give out his coat or shoes to people on the streets.
Alongside his great acts of service, Pier Giorgio had a great appreciation for God’s world. There can be a Christian misconception that if we are not helping someone else or improving ourselves, we’re squandering our God-given time. I think Pier Giorgio would disagree with this.
He often went to operas, theaters and museums. Not only did he climb mountains for fun, he also climbed mountains while reciting memorized passages from Dante. He held a great appreciation and reverence for God’s creations and the creations of people around him.
For all his reverence, though, Pier Giorgio was not a reserved man. He got into several fistfights with fascists and heretics and once wrote to a friend that the fascist party was “made up of a union of delinquents or thieves or assassins or idiots.”
He formed a mountain-hiking group with his friends, jokingly called the “Tipi Loschi” society or, translated, the “Sinister Ones.” Pier Giorgio even wrote the Sinister Ones a formal statute full of inside jokes, such as their motto, “few but good like macaroni.”
Pier Giorgio was clearly a bold and larger-than-life man. Saints are often seen as nuns quietly praying in convents or mystics up in mountains. While Frassati certainly loved his mountains, he showed that sainthood is not exclusive. It’s not just reserved for the martyrs like St. Peter, nor just for those in religious life like St. Thomas Aquinas, nor just for those with modest, quiet personalities like St. Thérèse.
St. Thérèse would have shriveled living the larger-than-life lifestyle of Pier Giorgio, and his sense of humor and personality would not have been suited for a hidden life like the one St. Thérèse lived.
The beauty of the communion of saints is that they come from all different walks of life, personalities, and places.
As Frederick Buechner said, “Vocation is where our greatest passion meets the world’s greatest need.” Living a holy life doesn’t mean conforming ourselves to others and fitting into a box for which we were not made. Rather, it is fully understanding and utilizing the gifts at which we most excel.
Pier Giorgio used his sense of humor, creative writing and even mountain climbing for holiness. His life is inspirational not just for his insanely powerful kindness, but also for the way he turned everything to God.
However, examples such as Pier Giorgio can sometimes end up daunting even when they are meant to be inspiring. Of course it’s daunting to take a saint’s moments of supernatural grace and compare them to our ordinary lives.
A response to this despair can be found in a simple phrase of Pier Giorgio’s, “Verso L’Alto.” This translates as “to the heights” and perfectly illustrates the spiritual journey which I think he would want us to take.
Our goal is not to immediately ascend to the summit, but to constantly reach for it. Mountains are climbed one step at a time, not all at once.
We can’t compare ourselves to Pier Giorgio, nor should we. God gives us the grace to live our lives, not anyone else’s. But we can take inspiration and learn from him to constantly strive, like he did, for the heights.