“Here are the injections for Converso. The pawn ticket is Sappa’s. I had forgotten it; renew it on my behalf” (Letters to His Friends and Family, Pier Giorgio Frassati, 238).

This was the last letter St. Pier Giorgio Frassati wrote, composed while he was dying of polio at age 24, directing his colleague at the St. Vincent de Paul Society to supply, in his absence, the requested goods for two impoverished friends (medication for Converso and the renewed ticket to prevent the loss of Sappa’s belongings). He likely contracted polio from his time serving the poor in his hometown of Turin.

Pier Giorgio was the son of an Italian senator who founded one of Italy’s preeminent newspapers, but Pier’s activities among the poor were unknown to his parents, who had often been wary of their son’s Catholic faith. As his sister wrote of their family dynamic: “What help was it to Senator Frassati … to have a son who carried away the flowers from drawing rooms to put them on the coffins of the poor?” (Luciana Frassati, A Man of the Beatitudes, 73). They only began to understand him when the poor of Turin flooded his funeral.

The act of charity made just before his death marked the end of his marvelous life on earth. We will consider just a sketch of that life.

Preferring hikes with friends and collecting rocks to doing schoolwork, Pier Giorgio adored the mountains (“If my studies permitted, I’d spend whole days in the mountains contemplating the Creator’s greatness in that pure air,” Letters, 132). Though he struggled academically, he was well cultured: he delighted in Dante, whom he was prone to quote spontaneously and sonorously around the grounds of his family home, and he kept a collection of St. Paul’s writings in his pocket alongside his rosary, which he once affectionately referred to as his will.

Like St. Catherine of Siena (whose biography was found open by his deathbed), he was a Dominican tertiary. Belonging to numerous clubs, he fought communism and abhorred fascism (“I glanced at Mussolini’s speech and my blood boiled,” Letters, 86). He was even arrested once for defending a Catholic flag with his friends. Inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, he advocated for the rights of workers and vowed to give his inheritance to the poor. Having almost completed his degree, he planned to become a missionary miner so he could work in solidarity with those suffering terrible working conditions and share Christ with them.

His love of the poor cannot be understood apart from his lifelong devotion to the Eucharist, which he first encountered as a child through the priests at his school. Of this devotion, he wrote as an adult:

I urge you with all the strength of my soul to approach the Eucharistic Table as often as possible. … And when you become totally consumed by this Eucharistic Fire, then you will be able to thank with greater awareness the Lord God who has called you to be part of His flock and you will enjoy that peace which those who are happy according to the world have never tasted. —Letters, 129

St. Pier Giorgio’s witness reminds us that devotion to the Eucharist is inextricably tied to love for the poor and vulnerable.

Pope St. John Paul II once said of America: “The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being, but especially the weakest and most [defenseless] ones.” Pier Giorgio (whose feast we celebrate on July 4th) persuades us that that kind of life is worth living—even at the risk of discomfort, of being misunderstood, and of death. When his friend asked how he overcame revulsion to the smells in houses when they visited the poor, Pier Giorgio responded: “Don’t ever forget that even though the house is sordid, you are approaching Christ. Remember what the Lord said: the good you do to the poor is good done to me” (A Man, 143).

As we reflect on American identity for the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, may God give each of us the eyes to see with ever more clarity the Eucharistic face of His Son in all the poor and vulnerable. St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, pray for us.