I’m a storyteller. I love to tell stories. Sometimes they’re about real things that have happened to me— like that time I (accidentally) bought a hotdog from a homeless man. Other times, I hear a story somewhere else, and because it made me laugh, or cry, or inspired me, I become convinced that other people need to hear it. That’s the case with the story I’m going to tell now: the story of Pier Giorgio Frassati. When I heard Pier Giorgio’s story, I became convinced that it needed to be heard by everyone I knew, especially college students. I can’t promise that it’ll be better than the hotdog story, but I still think it’s worth telling.
Pier Giorgio Frassati was born in the Italian city of Turin in 1901. I’m tempted to say he was born in the summer, but in all honesty, I’m not entirely sure, and it’s really not that important. His father, Alfredo, was the founder of a prominent newspaper, and would become a senator and ambassador. His mother, Adelaide, was a relatively successful painter. The family was wealthy, popular, and relatively normal. Despite being Italian, the Frassati’s weren’t especially religious. Alfredo was an agnostic, and Adelaide was a lukewarm Catholic. Which is what made Pier Giorgio such a mystery.
From a young age, Alfredo and Adelaide’s son was oddly and inexplicably religious. He liked praying and going to church, and he would often give food, money, and even his own shoes to the beggars who’d come to the Frassati mansion. Realizing that his parents looked on his religiosity with an air of confusion bordering on concern, Pier Giorgio decided to take his charitable activities underground. He gave to beggars, joined prayer groups, and bought medicine for children in the slums. Alfredo and Adelaide, resigning themselves to the fact that they’d never quite understand their son, didn’t ask questions about how Pier Giorgio spent his free time— or his allowance. Pier Giorgio was okay with that. In fact, after giving his bus money away, he’d run several miles home so he’d be on time for dinner.
But Pier Giorgio wasn’t just a little religious zealot. He was handsome, popular, and rambunctious. He was a skilled mountain climber, a terrible musician, and a mediocre student. His friends called themselves the Tipi Loschi, or shady characters, and got kicked out of a Catholic youth group for being too rowdy. People adored Pier Giorgio, and when he walked through the slums, children ran into the street and hugged him. He joked with everyone, sang lines from Dante, and constantly smiled. He also financially supported countless families in Turin by convincing the people he encountered to give him money.
One day, a family friend informed Pier Giorgio’s mother that the priests had been preaching about her son. He, of course, denied it. And so life went on, with Pier Giorgio serving dozens of families. When the time came to go to school, Pier Giorgio decided that, instead of taking over his father’s newspaper, he would become a mining engineer so that he could evangelize the miners. His family was, understandably, flabbergasted.
When he was twenty-four years old and two weeks away from graduating from college, Pier Giorgio caught an aggressive strain of polio, likely from someone in the slums. Within three days, Pier Giorgio’s legs were totally paralyzed. Unfortunately, his grandmother was dying in the room next to him. Unwilling to distract his family from her, he said nothing about the paralysis quickly taking hold of his body. When he couldn’t make it to his grandmother’s funeral, his parents complained that he was just being selfish. They had no idea that he only had a couple of days left to live.
On the fourth day of Pier Giorgio’s illness, his family finally realized how sick he was. They called in teams of doctors, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Pier Giorgio was frantically writing notes to his friends. His notes were instruction sheets, telling them where they could find food or medicine, and to whom they should bring it. Even in his last days, his primary concern was others. On the fifth day of Pier Giorgio’s illness, the Cardinal of Turin showed up to visit him. Confused, his parents sent the prelate away.
Finally, after six days of illness, on July 4th, 1925, Pier Giorgio Frassati died. Within hours, the Frassati manor was surrounded by people—homeless, the destitute, the abandoned—trying to get in. Pier Giorgio’s sister, Luciana, urged her parents to let the strangers in.
People poured in silently, and the crowds streamed into Pier Giorgio’s bedroom. They began to kneel in front of his body, venerating this amazing young man. “And that,” recalls Luciana, “was when Mama and Poppa realized that their son was a saint.”
Pier Giorgio’s story yields several crucial lessons, especially for students on a college campus. First, Pier Giorgio’s story speaks to a question that lies in the heart of almost everyone: how do I live a meaningful life? We often fall into the trap of thinking that if we just network enough, take a fifth class, pull more all-nighters, and commit to more extracurriculars, then we can live a good life. Pier Giorgio reminds us that that isn’t true: greatness is achieved by leading from behind, by serving the least among us, and not by seeking a reward or constant validation. People fell in love with Pier Giorgio because he loved them first, regardless of whether or not it benefitted him. Pier Giorgio exemplifies the paradox of greatness: by lowering himself down, by spending his time among the rejected and the destitute, he became great.
His story is also a story of sacrifice, and it points to something that our society seems to be forgetting: the necessity and value of suffering. So often, we run away from discomfort. I’m no different: I hate being cold, hungry, tired, or sore. Society as a whole seems obsessed with making suffering disappear, a crusade that manifests itself in the quest for immortality, the emergence of safe spaces, and a push for universal healthcare. Pier Giorgio’s life was marked by suffering. Not only did his family misunderstand him, but his mother prevented him from marrying a young woman he had fallen in love with. He bore it patiently. He also routinely stayed up all night in prayer, woke up early for Mass, fasted, and endured long, arduous mountain climbs. His last six days were marked by excruciating suffering which he bore patiently. His willingness to suffer wasn’t masochistic. It was a sign of authentic love. Pier Giorgio understood that love demands suffering. Love isn’t just a fuzzy feeling, a warm emotion, or something we do when we feel like it. It’s hard. It’s gritty. Love is what gets a dad out of bed at three in the morning to clean up his daughter’s vomit. It’s what drives a mom to take on more shifts to support her family. It’s what pushes a husband to persevere for his bride, and vice versa. It’s no wonder that, in a world driven by a desire to eliminate suffering, the divorce rate is skyrocketing, relationships are falling apart, and love seems hard to find. Pier Giorgio is a testament to the enduring value of suffering.
In some ways, Pier Giorgio’s life may seem remote, unrelatable, or unattainable. But he wasn’t so different from all of us. Not really. And his life is a testament to what our lives have the potential to be: full, vibrant, loving, and glorious. There’s so much talk about toxic masculinity, or what it means to be a “woman or a man for and with others.” Pier Giorgio reminds us what a man for others really is: a man consumed by love.