Jul 04 2009
Independence and Maturity: Pier Giorgio Frassati
Behold the man of the eight beatitudes who bears in himself the grace of the Gospel, the Good News, the joy of salvation offered to us by Christ…”- Pope John Paul II
Today is not just Independence Day for the United States of America. It also marks the death of Pier Giorgio Frassati, a young man of Turin, Italy, who died of polio on this day in 1925. He loved mountain-climbing and the camaraderie of friends (but hated dancing**). He was also an independent young man who led a double life.
His father, Alfredo Frassati, was active in Italian politics and founded the liberal newspaper La Stampa. Mr. Frassati believed in frugality, so he didn’t give his children much spending money. His son took after him by being politically active, even chasing off Fascists who attacked his family’s home.
But in reading Pier Giorgio’s story, I was struck by how much potential for tension there must have been between father and son. Unlike his agnostic father, Pier Giorgio was a devout Christian who read and re-read St. Paul’s writings and attended daily Mass. He became a member of the Third Order of the Dominicans. This doesn’t mean a monk, by the way. Third Order (or “tertiary”) members are ordinary people who live in the world but follow the Dominican rule of prayer, study and preaching.
According to the Assocazione Pier Giorgio Frassati, ”in opposition to his father’s political ideas, he became a very active and enthusiastic member of the newly founded Italian Popular Party which promoted the Catholic Church’s teaching based on the principles of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum.”
Pier Giorgio kept a ledger to track what he spent, but it wasn’t the account of a typical young man with money and free time. He budgeted for various people whom he supported financially. He often gave away his train-fare and ran home to arrive at mealtime. His father was stickler for punctuality.
Pier Giorgio could have been been at loggerheads with his father, like St. Francis of Assisi, who famously renounced his wealthy father’s goods -including stripping the clothes off his back and walking away naked. Instead, Pier Giorgio honored his father and kept his acts of charity a secret.
His father knew about his mountain-climbing, his active nature, his many friendships. But he saw merely the tip of the iceberg of Pier Giorgio’s charity. In 1920, Mr. Frassati was appointed ambassador to Germany. A German reporter wrote an account of a public instance of this generous spirit:
One night in Berlin, with the temperature at twelve degrees below zero, he gave his overcoat to a poor old man shivering with cold. His father scolded him, and he replied simply and matter-of-factly: ‘But you see, papa, it was cold.’
His double life was exposed after his death. The people he’d helped had known him by the moniker “Fra Girolamo” (Brother Jerome). They had had no idea that he came from a prominent family.
At his funeral, his family was similarly shocked to find the streets lined with thousands of people whom Pier Giorgio had helped. His father had had no idea.
Every one of you knows that the foundation of our religion is charity. Without it all our religion would crumble, because we would not truly be Catholics as long as we did not carry out or rather shape our whole life by the two commandments in which the essence of the Catholic Faith lies: to love God with all our strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.” – Pier Giorgio, in a speech to fellow students
For more about this saintly young man, check out Frassati USA, the original Assocazione Pier Giorgio Frassati (includes English), or Frassati groups in Argentina, Canada or Poland.
**Blessed Pier Giorgio was a man of my family’s own heart. Like my father, he hated dancing. Like my grandfather (of Pier Giorgio’s generation), he studied mining engineering and loved gardening. And his love of practical jokes? For that alone, we’d adopt him!
