Pier Giorgio Frassati: Patron Saint of the Violent? - Interview
Frassati, who died of poliomyelitis at the age of 24, was declared Blessed by John Paul II on 20 May 1990. For the occasion, a photograph used for his beatification, which showed him smoking a pipe, was retouched because smoking would not have been appropriate for a future "blessed".
At the age of 19, Frassati had joined the Conferences of St Vincent de Paul to help the needy, and at 21 he became a Dominican tertiary.
At Frassati's beatification, John Paul II described him as a person of "Vincentian holiness" and a model of Christian life of heroic virtue and a martyr of charity, a "man of the Beatitudes" and a man "completely immersed in the mystery of God and dedicated to the constant service of his neighbour".
But there is another side to the story. Gloria.tv has collected the testimony of Dr Francesco Rosina, a former civil servant in Italy.
Did you know Pier Giorgio Frassati?
Obviously not, I was born in 1948 and Pier Giorgio Frassati died in July 1925. But I knew a person who had a very unpleasant encounter with Frassati.
Why did you know this person?
This person, Cavalier Corrado, was a friend who helped our family a lot. I lost my father when I was eleven. This friend, then Director of the Provincial Treasury, was very close to us at that time. He carried out all the numerous and tedious bureaucratic formalities so that my mother could receive a pension.
Did you keep in touch with him?
In spite of the age difference (he was born in 1902), I continued to visit him, especially when he was a widower and spent his last years paralysed in his lower limbs in a nursing home. At the end of the 1980s, during one of my visits, I told him about the forthcoming beatification of Pier Giorgio Frassati, and he told me his story.
What did he tell you?
He told me the following: "One day, in 1923, I was distributing Fascist Party leaflets in front of the Polytechnic in Turin when a club hit me violently on the head. I fell to the ground and the assailant jumped on me, grabbed my head with both hands and shouted: 'Death to the Fascist!' He would have killed me if a Good Samaritan who had seen the scene had not intervened. This good Samaritan chased the man away, carried me on his shoulders and took me to the San Giovanni Battista hospital. The attacker was Pier Giorgio Frassati and the Good Samaritan was the Socialist Giuseppe Saragat (+1988), who became President of the Italian Republic in 1964".
What was the political situation then?
This was the time of the first Mussolini government of 1923, and the Catholic Partito Popolare was allied with the Fascists. Giovanni Gronchi (+1978), who belonged to the Partito Popolare, was Mussolini's minister while the Socialists were in opposition. Gronchi later also became President of the Republic (1955-1962).
Which political group did Frassati belong to?
Pier Giorgio Frassati belonged to the faction of Romolo Murri (+1944), a former priest who married in 1912 and was a member of parliament.
Did you tell the Frassati victim to contact the Vatican?
Yes, I did. I told him, after the beatification process had started but not yet finished, that he should appeal to the Promotor iustitiae. I knew this priest very well because he was my confessor at the time.
And what did he say?
He replied that it is not men who decide our final fate. He had forgiven Frassati and hoped that Frassati had also repented. My confessor, the aforementioned Promotor iustitiae at the Sacra Rota, the theologian Quaglia, used to say: 'Even priests and bishops are mammals like the rest of us and are subject to error'.
What did you think of the victim's silence?
Of course I was disappointed. When I went to visit my ailing parish priest, who had been hospitalised for a stroke in the 'Piccola casa della Divina Provvidenza', I noticed that the hospital pavilion was dedicated to Pier Giorgio Frassati! It is not impossible, that the family of the "blessed", being very wealthy, made a congruent offer to the "Cottolengo" in order to obtain this dedication.
But wasn't there a miracle attributed to Frassati?
Well, the miracle attributed to Frassati is rather dubious. It concerns the recovery of a person from a particular form of tuberculosis in the pre-antibiotic era. But it must be said that in the pre-antibiotic era, spontaneous remissions were eight per cent. With the protocol adopted in Italy (which was a pioneer at the time) and perfected by Professor Forlanini, it was almost 25 per cent.
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