A Saint on Skis

As Pier Giorgio Frassati was declared Blessed by St. John Paul II, a banner of him was unfurled. Traditionally such banners depict an icon of the saint. But instead it showed a young, strong mountain climber with one foot firmly resting on rock.

"With every passing day," Pier Giorgio wrote, "I fall madly in love with the mountains; their fascination attracts me." He was a member of the Italian Alpine Club and scaled a number of mountains. He once spent a sleepless night in a hole dug in snow and a descent in a snowstorm. The mountains allowed him to test his athletic body. With contagious joy he experienced the spirit of emulation.

With others, he would sometimes say his foot hurt so he needed to rest in order to not humiliate those who really did need to rest. He would also go back and forth between the mountains and plain in order to lighten the backpacks of those who were a little weaker. He had a spirit not even fatigue could destroy. Despite his off-key voice, he would sing for the group or invite everyone to pray before sleep.

He had a deep spiritual life with the Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin as the two poles of his prayer life. While only 17, he joined the St. Vincent de Paul Society serving the sick and needy, caring for orphans and assisting the servicemen back from World War I. He would run home from school so he could give his bus fare to others. His charity was not simply giving to others, but fully giving himself. He often gave up vacations at the family summer home because "If everyone leaves Turin, who will take care of the poor?"

He told a friend he had decided to become a mining engineer (studying at the Royal Polytechnic University of Turin) so he could "serve Christ better among the miners." He joined the Catholic Student Foundation and Catholic Action promoting the Church's social teaching based on the principles Pope Leo XIII set in his encyclical Rerum Novarum.

Pier Giorgio contracted polio just before graduating form the university. Doctors suspected he caught the disease from the sick whom he tended. Still, he neglected his own health because his grandmother was dying. After six days of great suffering, he died on July 4, 1925 at the age of 24. The day before he died, with a paralyzed hand, he wrote to a friend asking him to take medicine to a poor man he had been visiting.

Upon his death, his family was stunned by the multitude of poor and needy who came to do him homage. They, in turn, were shocked to learn that he had been the heir to a wealthy family.

St John Paul II  said, "I wanted to pay homage to a young man who was able to witness to Christ with singular effectiveness in this century of ours. When I was a young man, I, too, felt the beneficial influence of his example and, as a student, I was impressed by the force of his testimony."

His remains, found incorrupt and completely intact in 1981, were moved from the family tomb to the cathedral in Turin. In 1990, at the beatification, St. John Paul II called him the "Man of the Eight Beatitudes." He was also named a Patron Saint of World Youth Days.