by Luca Rolandi - Pier Giorgio Frassati, the young man who loved taking his friends to the mountains to direct their gaze "upward," the young son of Adelaide Ametis and Alfredo Frassati, was a fortunate boy, raised between the air of the Biella hills in Pollone and the Crocetta in Turin. He was committed to the Catholic movement, that young man whom John Paul II beatified on May 20, 1990, calling him "the man of the eight Beatitudes."
Frassati was a "wonderful model of Christian life," because he lived his youth "entirely immersed in the mystery of God and dedicated to the constant service of others," the Pope stated that day. For Pier Giorgio, his father's influence was strong. Alfredo Frassati edited and owned the city's most important newspaper, La Stampa, until the rise of Fascism. Later, he would become an ambassador and an influential figure in the liberal Savoy world: driven from Turin by the nascent regime, he brought his family to experience other cultures and environments in Berlin during the challenging years of the Weimar Republic. Within the dynamics and complexities of liberal Italy, amidst contradictions, poverty, and impetuous industrial development, he anticipated and completed the Christian vision of charity initiated in the previous century by Turin's social saints, in his own way, as a young man and without being able to imagine what his example would represent.
Turin in the 1920s
In the Turin of Antonio Gramsci and Piero Gobetti, the young Frassati manifested the concreteness of a Christian activism not alien to contemplation but rooted in the contradictions and needs of history in Catholic Action and in many forms of volunteer work, charity, and intense and conscious spirituality. As a young man, he joined Don Luigi Sturzo's new Popular Party with great hopes. A simple militant, he belonged to the most rigidly anti-fascist faction. In the autumn of 1923, he resigned from the Fucino club in protest because the Cesare Balbo club had displayed the Italian flag for Benito Mussolini's visit to Turin. Pier Giorgio could not tolerate Catholics paying homage to the instigator of the assassination of Don Giovanni Minzoni and Giacomo Matteotti, and to the enemy of freedom and democracy.
Proud anti-fascist, between political action and contemplation
Within the PPI, he shared the most progressive and socially open orientations, even calling for an anti-fascist alliance between the Popular Party and the Socialists forty years in advance. In 1922, the year of the Fascist March on Rome, Senator Alfredo Frassati also proposed the Popular Party-Socialist coalition as a barrier to the "Blackshirts." This staunch opposition stemmed from a strong sense of responsibility for building a democratic path for the country's future. An anti-fascist by religious inspiration, Pier Giorgio Frassati contributed to think tanks such as Pensiero Popolare, the organ of the left-wing PPI, and was the promoter and distributor of the Catholic newspaper Il Momento, much to the annoyance of his father Alfredo.
In defense of the flag of Catholic Youth
He was among the initiators of the agitation for university reform, which began in Turin and spread throughout Italy. He supported the protests against Giovanni Gentile's reform and joined the anti-fascist university alliance. He fought with courage and humility against Mussolini's despotism, defying danger. In September 1921, at the national congress in Rome for the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Youth, he defended the club's flag against attacks by Blackshirts. He participated as a delegate in the dramatic 1923 PPI congress in Turin, where the split between those who wanted an agreement with Mussolini and those, like himself, who opposed it, was consummated.
His opposition was also evident in his letters: fascism exercises violence and the people are oppressed. After the Matteotti assassination, he spoke of "monstrous things happening in Italy. We live in agitation, not knowing what lies ahead. Only faith gives us the possibility of living." In "Notes for a Discourse on Charity," he describes the material and moral ruins of the war and hopes for the regeneration of society "so that a radiant dawn may dawn, in which all nations will recognize Jesus Christ as their King." Following the triumph of fascism, he attacked "these gypsies, who daily sell themselves to fascism, as did Il Momento," the Catholic newspaper that had become pro-fascist.
The "last ones" greeted him
Upon his death from acute polio on July 4, 1925, the day of his funeral, in the Church of the Blessed Virgin of Grace in the noble Crocetta district, a vast crowd of poor, humble people, the least of the least, greeted and thanked him. For his authenticity and beauty, Pier Giorgio Frassati is universally considered one of the "social saints" of Turin and of young people around the world, a constant presence at World Youth Days. In his family, his sister Luciana Frassati in particular, dedicated her century-long life to rebuilding the human and spiritual virtues of her brother, who is a model of holiness and lives in the peace of God the Father.
*Politics, action and contemplation It was published in issue 3 of Sign in the world, in distribution with occur