During the prayer at the Ac Assembly, Cardinal Semeraro announced: the canonization “is looming for the next Jubilee year”

Pier Giorgio Frassati, the boy who loved taking his friends to the mountains to push their gaze “upwards”, will be declared a saint next year. The young blessed from Turin, lover of God and men, will be canonized during the Jubilee of 2025. The prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, who spoke during the XVIII Assembly, made the big announcement this afternoon. national team of the Italian Catholic Action, in Sacrofano. “I would like to tell you that the canonization of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati is now clear on the horizon and is looming for the next Jubilee year,” said the cardinal, whose speech was interrupted by long applause from the thousand Ac members present .

«In the homily for the rite of his beatification – added the prefect, citing Frassati among the most luminous figures of saints who grew up in AC – which took place on 20 May 1990, Saint John Paul II called him the man of the Beatitudes; he also said that “in Catholic Action he lived his Christian vocation with joy and pride and committed himself to loving Jesus and seeing in him the brothers he met on his path”». Frassati, born in Turin in 1901 and died at just 24 years old, was a «wonderful model of Christian life», underlined Semeraro, who lived his youth, quoting John Paul II, «entirely immersed in the mystery of God and dedicated to constant service of others”.

The young blessed from Turin, son of Alfredo Frassati, historic director of La Stampa of Turin, was involved in the active laity since he was a boy, and in particular in Catholic Action and in Fuci, growing up in the Christian faith and in the desire to serve the poorest . He is considered one of the “social saints” of Turin, like Don Giovanni Bosco and Don Giuseppe Cottolengo, even without being formally yet a saint, for his life dedicated to the most fragile and marginalized. «In the sanctity of Pier Giorgio – continued Semeraro – there is a value of continuity with the tradition of his land: he, in fact, was involved in the work of defending the faith, through the charity lavished in the field of marginalization» . At 19 Frassati joined the Conferences of Saint Vincent de Paul to help the most needy and at 21 he became a Dominican tertiary.

«We are happy for news that comes as a precious gift for the Association, as we celebrate our National Assembly – declared the president of the AC, Giuseppe Notarstefano -. Italian Catholic Action has historically been, and still is today, an intuition and passion of young people like Piergiorgio Frassati. An experience of the Church where faith is mixed with life day by day, a place where one can fully experience friendship with the Lord who often becomes a shining example for everyone as for Alberto Marvelli, Gino Pistoni, Armida Barelli and indeed Piergiorgio Frassati”. People like him, he added, “were able to make their lives a gift, a sign for their times and for all times”.

The blessed was a young man among young people, a friend of all, a lover of sport, poetry and mountaineering. «There is also, however, an element of novelty – concluded the prefect – and it is the fact of having tried to compare the value of faith with the entire range of human experience, working charitably in every area: in the environments of university, work, the press (Pier Giorgio collected subscriptions not for his father’s newspaper, but for the Catholic one), political and party commitment, and wherever it was necessary to defend social freedoms, always trying to conceive and foment ‘associationism, as Christian friendship destined for the birth of a social Catholicism.”

Last Thursday 25 April, in the audience in St. Peter’s Square with the AC, Pope Francis underlined, Semeraro added, that “associative life finds its common denominator precisely in the embrace of charity”. And wasn’t Piergiorgio’s earthly life like this?

(Article published on Avvenire.it )
Source: https://azionecattolica.it/pier-giorgio-frassati-sara-santo-nellanno-del-giubileo/