Feast day: 4 July
Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati
A Turin engineering student, mountaineer and lay Dominican who hid a life of daily Eucharist and secret service of the poor behind an exuberant friendship, and died of poliomyelitis at twenty-four.
- Born
- 6 April 1901, Turin (Italy)
- Died
- 4 July 1925, Turin (Italy)
- Canonization
- Beatified 20 May 1990 by John Paul II; canonized 7 September 2025 by Pope Leo XIV.
- Religious order
- Lay Dominican (Third Order)
- Country
- Italy
Biography
A wealthy and difficult home
Son of Alfredo Frassati, founder of the newspaper La Stampa and later Italian ambassador to Berlin, and of the painter Adelaide Ametis, Pier Giorgio grew up in a prosperous but religiously indifferent and unhappy household. From adolescence he received Communion daily and made nightly adoration.
The poor of Turin
He joined the Saint Vincent de Paul Society at seventeen and spent his allowance and even his train fare on the poor of Turin's slums, giving away medicine, rent money and his own coat. He also joined Catholic Action and the Dominican Third Order in 1922, taking the name Girolamo after Savonarola.
Verso l'alto and sudden death
An enthusiastic mountaineer, he wrote 'Verso l'alto' ('To the heights') on his last photograph. In June 1925 he contracted fulminant poliomyelitis, probably from the sick he visited, and died within six days while the family attended his dying grandmother. The streets of Turin filled with the poor whom nobody knew he had helped.
Timeline
- 1901 — Born in Turin
- 1918 — Joins the Saint Vincent de Paul Society
- 1922 — Professed in the Dominican Third Order
- 1925 — Dies of poliomyelitis on 4 July
- 1990 — Beatified by John Paul II
- 2025 — Canonized by Pope Leo XIV
Dates marked ~ are traditional or debated among historians.
Symbols
Mountain and ice axe — His climbing and the ascent to holiness, 'verso l'alto'.
Pipe — The ordinary, cheerful humanity of his sanctity.
Virtues & spiritual lessons
Joy, hidden charity, purity, and the union of intense friendship and sport with a deeply Eucharistic interior life.
Importance in the Church
Called by John Paul II 'the man of the eight beatitudes', he shows young lay people that holiness needs no habit, no cloister and no extraordinary phenomena.
Quotes
“Verso l'alto — to the heights.”
Inscription on his last photograph, June 1925
“To live without faith, without a patrimony to defend, without a steady struggle for truth — that is not living, but existing.”
Letter to Isidoro Bonini, 27 February 1925
Prayers
Prayer to Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati
Saint Pier Giorgio, friend of the poor and of the mountains, you found Christ in the Eucharist and served him in the slums of your city. Obtain for us a joyful faith, a generous heart, and the courage to climb always toward the heights. Amen.
Devotional prayer used by Frassati youth associations.
Places
Cathedral of Turin — Where his body rests since 1981.
Valle di Susa and the Alps of Piedmont — The mountains he climbed with his friends.
Entries are drawn from the Roman Martyrology, the General Roman Calendar, canonization records of the Holy See, and the saints' own writings. Where a date, quotation or attribution is uncertain, it is marked as such. (63 saints)