Pier Giorgio was born in Turin in 1901 to a wealthy and influential family — his father founded and edited a major Italian newspaper and later served as ambassador to Germany. Rather than adopting his family's more secular, comfortable lifestyle, Pier Giorgio devoted much of his free time and money to the poor of Turin, often visiting the sick and needy directly in the city's poorest districts, generally without telling even his own family.
He was also an enthusiastic mountaineer and outdoorsman, seeing joy in nature and friendship as fully compatible with a serious spiritual life, and was active in Catholic student and social organizations of the period. He contracted poliomyelitis, likely from his contact with the sick, and died suddenly in 1925 at only twenty-four; it was only at his funeral, attended by enormous crowds of the poor he had quietly helped, that his own family learned the extent of his charitable work. He was canonized in 2025.
Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati
The Man of the Beatitudes
An Italian university student and avid mountaineer known for quietly serving the poor of Turin before dying of polio at twenty-four.
- Born
- 1901
- Died
- 1925
- Birthplace
- Turin, Italy
- Died in
- Turin, Italy
- Country
- Italy
- Canonised
- 2025-09-07
- Century
- 20th century
Categories
Why People Pray to Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati
Saint Pier Giorgio is invoked by young people and university students, and by anyone seeking to combine an active, joyful life with quiet, unpublicized charity.
