St. Pier Giorgio Frassati

Pier Giorgio Frassati was born in Turin on 6 April 1901, into one of the most influential families in the city. He was educated at home, then at the Massimo D'Azeglio school and the Jesuit-run Istituto Sociale. In 1918 he enrolled at the Royal Polytechnic of Turin to study mining engineering. He climbed mountains from childhood and never stopped. With his friends he founded the Società dei Tipi Loschi — the Shady Characters Society — where the fun became a way of building friendship and sharing the faith. He fell in love once and never told her, out of an unusual modesty and a fear of unsettling her.

Most of his free time went to the poor of Turin. He visited families, spent his own money on the worst-off cases, and belonged to the St. Vincent de Paul conferences, the Catholic University Federation, and the Nocturnal Adoration Society. Pope Leo XIV described friends who saw him walking the streets with carts full of supplies for the poor and renamed him Frassati Impresa Trasporti — the Frassati Transport Company. He called charity "the foundation of our religion," and said of the people he served: "Around the poor and the sick, I see a light that we do not have." In 1922 he took the Dominican Third Order habit as Fra Girolamo. Under Fascism he paid personally, more than once, for his Catholic associations and his membership in the Popular Party, which he joined at nineteen.

At the end of June 1925 he developed severe polio. Within days he lost his appetite and the use of his body. He died on 4 July, twenty-four years old, and an enormous crowd came to the funeral. On his last photograph, climbing in the Val di Lanzo, he had written a single word: Verso l'alto — upwards.