September 5, 2025 • 21 mins
Today in Rome, Pope Leo XIV will declare that the Church has two new saints - St Pier Giorgio and St Carlo Acutis. It's been a long wait for those who love Pier Giorgio - 100 years!! Somewhat less for Carlo - 19 years. But, these two young men have much in common, more than just being young and Italian.
Both these two young saints show us holiness to an extraordinary degree but, because of who they were and the lives they led, they inspire us to greatness.
St Pier Giorgio's favourite saying "Verso L'Alto", which is English means "To the Heights" is what both of them want to do for us, namely, to lead us to the heights of heaven.
St Pier Giorgio and St Carlo, pray for us.
If you would like to contact me to provide feedback, suggestions or to ask questions you can do this via email:
frpchandler@armidale.catholic.org.au
Also if you would like to support me in this work, please send me an email and I will provide details for how you can make a donation.
Music by Samuel F. Johannson and by Tomomi Kato from Pixabay
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 00 (00:01):
Hello on this most important Sunday.
Now why do I say that?
Well, later on our time inAustralia, 6pm tonight actually,
but at 10am Rome time, thecanonisation Mass for Pier
(00:22):
Giorgio Frassati and CarloAcutis will take place.
Pier Giorgio is the older ofthe two and it is a hundred
years this year since he died inhis hometown of Torino or Turin
(00:43):
in Italy.
He was born in 1901, died in1925 at the age of 24.
And St.
Pier Giorgio came from aprestigious and wealthy family.
His mother Adelaide was awell-known painter and his
(01:04):
father Alfredo was a politician,Senator for the Italian kingdom
and also was made the Italianambassador to Berlin.
He also managed and owned theinfluential Italian newspaper La
Stampa, which is still goingtoday, although it has passed
(01:28):
out of the Frassati familypossession.
Carlo Acutis was born at theother end of the 20th century,
90 years after Pier Giorgio, onthe 3rd of May 1991.
He was born in London, but heis Italian.
(01:52):
His parents were there workingin London when he was born.
And Carlo became known for hisdeep devotion to God and his
ability to inspire others, evenat a young age.
Despite his parents notpractising the faith, Carlo's
(02:14):
faith began to grow.
As a child he would pray beforethe cross, say his daily rosary
and attend Mass and Eucharisticadoration, where his reverence
for the Eucharist deepened.
But there's more that unitesthese two amazing young saints
(02:38):
than simply being both young andItalian.
I first met Pier GiorgioFrassati, met in inverted
commas, in 2008 when his bodycame to Sydney for World Youth
Day.
And I was amazed, first of all,at the photographs and pictures
(03:04):
of him.
He seemed not only a handsomeyoung man, but bright and
cheerful, always smiling.
The reason why his body came toSydney is that his body is
incorrupt.
When his coffin was exhumedfrom the ground in the cemetery
(03:31):
in Polone, 60 years after hisdeath in 1985, as is always
required when a cause forcanonization is well underway,
And it's done so that there canbe verification that it is the
(03:52):
body of the one who could be asaint.
When the lid was taken off thecoffin, his sister, his only
sibling, Luciana, remarked thathe looked exactly the same as he
had done on the day of hisdeath 60 years earlier.
She also remarked humorouslythat his eyebrows were still as
(04:17):
bushy as ever.
And she rolled up one of thetrouser legs of the suit he was
wearing and she said that hismuscles looked as if he had just
come off the mountainsclimbing, which was one of his
favourite activities.
When I met Pier Giorgio at thattime, I fell in love with him
(04:44):
straight away because he is suchan engaging young man and so
holy.
And he did the same to hiscontemporaries, which I'll come
to in a little while.
I first met Carlo probably inaround about 2013 or 2014 when
(05:08):
his cause for beatificationbegan and was well underway.
And what impressed me abouthim, seeing the photographs of
him, was again, like PierGiorgio, how cheerful he seemed.
And of course, as it is said,he is the first saint of this
(05:33):
millennium that has grown up inthis millennium, in this third
millennium.
So let me tell you now whatthey have in common.
Well, first of all, they bothhad a great devotion and love
(05:54):
for the Blessed Sacrament andfor Holy Mass.
When Pier Giorgio was at schoolaround about the age of 12, he
asked permission if he couldreceive Holy Communion every
day, which was very differentfrom the practice at that time.
(06:15):
Pier Giorgio says that he neversaw his mother receive Holy
Communion, and his father didnot go to Mass, although they
were Catholic, but they werelike many Catholics of their
time.
He pressed and insisted, andhis mother gave the permission.
And so Pier Giorgio would go toMass every day and receive Holy
(06:41):
Communion.
And he urged his friends toapproach Holy Communion
frequently because he said,there you will draw strength to
fight inner struggles.
Carlo asked when he was sevenyears old, before the usual age
of receiving Holy Communion, ifhe could make his first Holy
(07:02):
Communion.
And then he too received HolyCommunion every day, making this
wonderful and simple prayer,which I think we could all use.
Jesus, come right in and makeyourself at home.
And Carlo called the Eucharisthis highway to heaven.
(07:23):
So both of these two new saintsdidn't settle just for Mass on
Sunday.
They went to daily Mass.
And Pier Giorgio's examplebrought his friends to daily
Mass, and the example of Carlobrought his parents back to the
(07:45):
faith and attendance at Mass.
linked closely with Mass andHoly Communion is regular
confession, as we all know.
And Pier Giorgio went toconfession regularly, and his
confessor admitted after he haddied in the depositions for his
(08:05):
cause for canonization that PierGiorgio never lost the grace of
baptism.
In other words, he nevercommitted a mortal sin.
And Carlo, even though he wasonly a boy, he also chose a
priest to be his spiritualdirector, the same priest his
(08:25):
mother did.
And he would travel regularlythe couple of hours from Milan
to Bologna for monthly spiritualdirection.
And he would go to confessionevery week.
Now, I don't think you'll besurprised, but the next thing
that they share in common is alove for Eucharistic adoration.
(08:48):
Carlo likened being in theEucharistic presence of the Lord
like going into the sun to geta sun tan.
He wrote, if we go in front ofJesus in the Eucharist, we
become saints.
Pier Giorgio went to adorationfrequently, and sometimes he
would do it all night.
(09:10):
and he would coax his friendsto come with him.
Pier Giorgio was a very goodathlete, not only a skier, a
mountain climber, across-country skier, but he was
fairly good at other pursuitstoo.
And often he would have a betwith his friends when they
(09:31):
played billiards in the evening,and he would say that if they
won, he would pay the money thatwas the bet.
But if he won, they would haveto come along with him to
Eucharistic Adoration.
And he usually won.
And they went with him.
Mostly his friends would fallasleep because he was coming
(09:52):
into the night time.
And probably they should havebeen in bed.
but he remained awake.
And once he was seen in suchdeep contemplation before the
Blessed Sacrament that he didn'tfeel candle wax falling onto
his hands.
And they both had immensedevotion to the Blessed Virgin
(10:15):
Mary. Pier Giorgio would say therosary every day.
Once during the month of May,he decided to make a gift to our
Blessed Mother of as manyrosaries as he could say in the
month of May.
And in that particular month hesaid 120 of them.
(10:37):
So that's about three or four aday.
And once one of his friends sawhim walking down the street and
carrying his rosary beads inhis hand.
And his acquaintance said tohim, had he become fanatical
about religion?
And Pier Giorgio replied that,no, he'd merely remained
(11:00):
Catholic.
Carlo also had a love for therosary.
He called Our Lady the onlywoman in his life, and the
rosary each day was the mostprecious appointment that he
kept with her.
And Carlo would ask his parentsto take him to various shrines
(11:24):
of Our Lady around Europe, toPompeii, Lourdes and Fatima.
Now surprisingly, althoughthey were living in different
times, different ends of the20th century and Carlo into the
21st, they both had anexceptional understanding of
(11:46):
charity, love of the poor andthe disadvantaged.
And they showed this, both ofthem, from an early age.
Pier Giorgio often spoke thatwhen he was in his late teens
and early twenties as he wouldgo to the slums of Turin to do
(12:07):
his work for the St.
Vincent de Paul Societyvisiting the poor families who
worked in the factories ofTurin.
He would say that he saw aspecial light around the poor
and his motive for going to seethem was that Jesus came to him
every day in Holy Communion, andhe in turn visited Jesus
(12:30):
present in the poor.
At his funeral, his parentswere surprised to see hundreds
of the poor present at hisfuneral.
The streets around the church,the parish church called La
Consolata, sorry, not LaConsolata, La Crocetta, just
(12:55):
across the road from theirfamily home.
It was packed with people, andthey couldn't get through.
So they had to go out the frontof the door of the house,
carrying his coffin, and goaround behind the church, and
then come back and enter fromthe street at the other end.
It's said that by the time PierGiorgio was 21, he was
(13:23):
supporting over 120 families inthe slums of Turin from his own
money.
Carlo perhaps didn't live longenough to do something like that
but he was always naturallyfriendly and he made friends
with janitors, migrants anddomestic workers around the area
(13:47):
where the family lived inMilano.
From his own savings he wouldpurchase sleeping bags for the
homeless and he organisedfundraising efforts for the
poor.
And he was especially friendlyto the beggars around his parish
church.
The other thing that bringsthem together and they share in
(14:12):
common is their death.
Both of them died very young,Carlo at the age of 15 and
Pier Giorgio at the age of 24.
Pier Giorgio contractedpoliomyelitis, a viral disease,
(14:34):
which most likely he caught fromthe slums of Torino.
And his death came quickly,within a week.
It was a painful death becauseit was a gradual paralysis of
the body.
until the paralysis affectedthe internal organs and the
(14:56):
heart.
He was in great pain and thepain progressed over the week.
But only in the last two tothree days did his family know
that there was anythingseriously wrong with him.
They were somewhat preoccupiedwith the declining health of his
grandmother and her deathbefore him, three days before
(15:19):
him.
But Pier Giorgio wouldn't sayanything.
He suffered cheerfully and insilence.
Carlo died on October 12, 2006,Pier Giorgio on July 4, 1925.
Carlo had contracted leukaemia,the symptoms of which were only
(15:44):
visible in the last days of hislife.
He also endured his sufferings,which were many hemorrhages and
also a swelling of his glands distorted his features but He
(16:05):
endured it with his usualcheerfulness and quietness and
made no fuss.
And he died with a smile on hisface.
The world will look upon thesetwo young men, I will call them,
and they will be moved by thefact that they died young.
(16:28):
And they would say that it wastwo lives unfulfilled or even
wasted.
But we look at it differently,don't we?
We see in them two examples ofholiness.
And we see the fact that theirholiness shone out.
(16:55):
One of the things I findinteresting about both of them
is that they didn't think thatthey were special.
They didn't see themselves asholy.
In fact, Pier Giorgio, in theearly days of the week that he
was dying, said to a religioussister who came to see him, who
(17:19):
had been like a teacher when heand his sister were young in
their homeschooling, and PierGiorgio said to her, Do you
think I'll get to heaven?
And the sister assured him hewould.
Carlo did not also presume onhis own sanctity.
(17:47):
He also was wondering aboutwhether he could make it to
heaven.
And we know that because hismother wrote that he came to
know San Francisco Marto, one ofthe three Fatima children, and
(18:10):
when he heard that Our Lady saidthat Francisco would get to
heaven but he had to say manyrosaries, he remarked that if
Francisco was so kind and simplebut had to say so many rosaries
to get to heaven, He said, howcould I ever earn it, since in
comparison I am less saintly?
It's interesting too, isn't it,that although it's a hundred
(18:38):
years since Pier Giorgio died,and 19 years since Carlo died,
we still remember them.
And many people who lived threetimes longer than Pier Giorgio
we have forgotten about.
But the witness of the lives ofthese two young saints
(19:04):
resonates so powerfully with us.
And they are great examples andmentors for young people, most
particularly for young men.
Inside both of them, was afertile terrain that was ready
to welcome divine grace and theurges of the Holy Spirit.
(19:29):
All of us have that, but thesetwo young men had it to an
exceptional level, and they madeit to heaven, even though they
weren't sure they would.
So let us pray to these twoyoung saints.
(19:50):
Let us ask that they inspire uswith all the virtues that they
had through the grace of God andtheir cooperation with it.
And the last thing I'll say isPier Giorgio said to his
friends, they were hisuniversity friends, said to them
(20:12):
that the first one of us to getto heaven has to pull the
others up, using that mountainclimbing imagery.
So let us pray that PierGiorgio and Carlo would pull us
up to heaven.
Saint Pier Giorgio and SaintCarlo, pray for us.
Hello on this most important Sunday.
Now why do I say that?
Well, later on our time inAustralia, 6pm tonight actually,
but at 10am Rome time, thecanonisation Mass for Pier
(00:22):
Giorgio Frassati and CarloAcutis will take place.
Pier Giorgio is the older ofthe two and it is a hundred
years this year since he died inhis hometown of Torino or Turin
(00:43):
in Italy.
He was born in 1901, died in1925 at the age of 24.
And St.
Pier Giorgio came from aprestigious and wealthy family.
His mother Adelaide was awell-known painter and his
(01:04):
father Alfredo was a politician,Senator for the Italian kingdom
and also was made the Italianambassador to Berlin.
He also managed and owned theinfluential Italian newspaper La
Stampa, which is still goingtoday, although it has passed
(01:28):
out of the Frassati familypossession.
Carlo Acutis was born at theother end of the 20th century,
90 years after Pier Giorgio, onthe 3rd of May 1991.
He was born in London, but heis Italian.
(01:52):
His parents were there workingin London when he was born.
And Carlo became known for hisdeep devotion to God and his
ability to inspire others, evenat a young age.
Despite his parents notpractising the faith, Carlo's
(02:14):
faith began to grow.
As a child he would pray beforethe cross, say his daily rosary
and attend Mass and Eucharisticadoration, where his reverence
for the Eucharist deepened.
But there's more that unitesthese two amazing young saints
(02:38):
than simply being both young andItalian.
I first met Pier GiorgioFrassati, met in inverted
commas, in 2008 when his bodycame to Sydney for World Youth
Day.
And I was amazed, first of all,at the photographs and pictures
(03:04):
of him.
He seemed not only a handsomeyoung man, but bright and
cheerful, always smiling.
The reason why his body came toSydney is that his body is
incorrupt.
When his coffin was exhumedfrom the ground in the cemetery
(03:31):
in Polone, 60 years after hisdeath in 1985, as is always
required when a cause forcanonization is well underway,
And it's done so that there canbe verification that it is the
(03:52):
body of the one who could be asaint.
When the lid was taken off thecoffin, his sister, his only
sibling, Luciana, remarked thathe looked exactly the same as he
had done on the day of hisdeath 60 years earlier.
She also remarked humorouslythat his eyebrows were still as
(04:17):
bushy as ever.
And she rolled up one of thetrouser legs of the suit he was
wearing and she said that hismuscles looked as if he had just
come off the mountainsclimbing, which was one of his
favourite activities.
When I met Pier Giorgio at thattime, I fell in love with him
(04:44):
straight away because he is suchan engaging young man and so
holy.
And he did the same to hiscontemporaries, which I'll come
to in a little while.
I first met Carlo probably inaround about 2013 or 2014 when
(05:08):
his cause for beatificationbegan and was well underway.
And what impressed me abouthim, seeing the photographs of
him, was again, like PierGiorgio, how cheerful he seemed.
And of course, as it is said,he is the first saint of this
(05:33):
millennium that has grown up inthis millennium, in this third
millennium.
So let me tell you now whatthey have in common.
Well, first of all, they bothhad a great devotion and love
(05:54):
for the Blessed Sacrament andfor Holy Mass.
When Pier Giorgio was at schoolaround about the age of 12, he
asked permission if he couldreceive Holy Communion every
day, which was very differentfrom the practice at that time.
(06:15):
Pier Giorgio says that he neversaw his mother receive Holy
Communion, and his father didnot go to Mass, although they
were Catholic, but they werelike many Catholics of their
time.
He pressed and insisted, andhis mother gave the permission.
And so Pier Giorgio would go toMass every day and receive Holy
(06:41):
Communion.
And he urged his friends toapproach Holy Communion
frequently because he said,there you will draw strength to
fight inner struggles.
Carlo asked when he was sevenyears old, before the usual age
of receiving Holy Communion, ifhe could make his first Holy
(07:02):
Communion.
And then he too received HolyCommunion every day, making this
wonderful and simple prayer,which I think we could all use.
Jesus, come right in and makeyourself at home.
And Carlo called the Eucharisthis highway to heaven.
(07:23):
So both of these two new saintsdidn't settle just for Mass on
Sunday.
They went to daily Mass.
And Pier Giorgio's examplebrought his friends to daily
Mass, and the example of Carlobrought his parents back to the
(07:45):
faith and attendance at Mass.
linked closely with Mass andHoly Communion is regular
confession, as we all know.
And Pier Giorgio went toconfession regularly, and his
confessor admitted after he haddied in the depositions for his
(08:05):
cause for canonization that PierGiorgio never lost the grace of
baptism.
In other words, he nevercommitted a mortal sin.
And Carlo, even though he wasonly a boy, he also chose a
priest to be his spiritualdirector, the same priest his
(08:25):
mother did.
And he would travel regularlythe couple of hours from Milan
to Bologna for monthly spiritualdirection.
And he would go to confessionevery week.
Now, I don't think you'll besurprised, but the next thing
that they share in common is alove for Eucharistic adoration.
(08:48):
Carlo likened being in theEucharistic presence of the Lord
like going into the sun to geta sun tan.
He wrote, if we go in front ofJesus in the Eucharist, we
become saints.
Pier Giorgio went to adorationfrequently, and sometimes he
would do it all night.
(09:10):
and he would coax his friendsto come with him.
Pier Giorgio was a very goodathlete, not only a skier, a
mountain climber, across-country skier, but he was
fairly good at other pursuitstoo.
And often he would have a betwith his friends when they
(09:31):
played billiards in the evening,and he would say that if they
won, he would pay the money thatwas the bet.
But if he won, they would haveto come along with him to
Eucharistic Adoration.
And he usually won.
And they went with him.
Mostly his friends would fallasleep because he was coming
(09:52):
into the night time.
And probably they should havebeen in bed.
but he remained awake.
And once he was seen in suchdeep contemplation before the
Blessed Sacrament that he didn'tfeel candle wax falling onto
his hands.
And they both had immensedevotion to the Blessed Virgin
(10:15):
Mary. Pier Giorgio would say therosary every day.
Once during the month of May,he decided to make a gift to our
Blessed Mother of as manyrosaries as he could say in the
month of May.
And in that particular month hesaid 120 of them.
(10:37):
So that's about three or four aday.
And once one of his friends sawhim walking down the street and
carrying his rosary beads inhis hand.
And his acquaintance said tohim, had he become fanatical
about religion?
And Pier Giorgio replied that,no, he'd merely remained
(11:00):
Catholic.
Carlo also had a love for therosary.
He called Our Lady the onlywoman in his life, and the
rosary each day was the mostprecious appointment that he
kept with her.
And Carlo would ask his parentsto take him to various shrines
(11:24):
of Our Lady around Europe, toPompeii, Lourdes and Fatima.
Now surprisingly, althoughthey were living in different
times, different ends of the20th century and Carlo into the
21st, they both had anexceptional understanding of
(11:46):
charity, love of the poor andthe disadvantaged.
And they showed this, both ofthem, from an early age.
Pier Giorgio often spoke thatwhen he was in his late teens
and early twenties as he wouldgo to the slums of Turin to do
(12:07):
his work for the St.
Vincent de Paul Societyvisiting the poor families who
worked in the factories ofTurin.
He would say that he saw aspecial light around the poor
and his motive for going to seethem was that Jesus came to him
every day in Holy Communion, andhe in turn visited Jesus
(12:30):
present in the poor.
At his funeral, his parentswere surprised to see hundreds
of the poor present at hisfuneral.
The streets around the church,the parish church called La
Consolata, sorry, not LaConsolata, La Crocetta, just
(12:55):
across the road from theirfamily home.
It was packed with people, andthey couldn't get through.
So they had to go out the frontof the door of the house,
carrying his coffin, and goaround behind the church, and
then come back and enter fromthe street at the other end.
It's said that by the time PierGiorgio was 21, he was
(13:23):
supporting over 120 families inthe slums of Turin from his own
money.
Carlo perhaps didn't live longenough to do something like that
but he was always naturallyfriendly and he made friends
with janitors, migrants anddomestic workers around the area
(13:47):
where the family lived inMilano.
From his own savings he wouldpurchase sleeping bags for the
homeless and he organisedfundraising efforts for the
poor.
And he was especially friendlyto the beggars around his parish
church.
The other thing that bringsthem together and they share in
(14:12):
common is their death.
Both of them died very young,Carlo at the age of 15 and
Pier Giorgio at the age of 24.
Pier Giorgio contractedpoliomyelitis, a viral disease,
(14:34):
which most likely he caught fromthe slums of Torino.
And his death came quickly,within a week.
It was a painful death becauseit was a gradual paralysis of
the body.
until the paralysis affectedthe internal organs and the
(14:56):
heart.
He was in great pain and thepain progressed over the week.
But only in the last two tothree days did his family know
that there was anythingseriously wrong with him.
They were somewhat preoccupiedwith the declining health of his
grandmother and her deathbefore him, three days before
(15:19):
him.
But Pier Giorgio wouldn't sayanything.
He suffered cheerfully and insilence.
Carlo died on October 12, 2006,Pier Giorgio on July 4, 1925.
Carlo had contracted leukaemia,the symptoms of which were only
(15:44):
visible in the last days of hislife.
He also endured his sufferings,which were many hemorrhages and
also a swelling of his glands distorted his features but He
(16:05):
endured it with his usualcheerfulness and quietness and
made no fuss.
And he died with a smile on hisface.
The world will look upon thesetwo young men, I will call them,
and they will be moved by thefact that they died young.
(16:28):
And they would say that it wastwo lives unfulfilled or even
wasted.
But we look at it differently,don't we?
We see in them two examples ofholiness.
And we see the fact that theirholiness shone out.
(16:55):
One of the things I findinteresting about both of them
is that they didn't think thatthey were special.
They didn't see themselves asholy.
In fact, Pier Giorgio, in theearly days of the week that he
was dying, said to a religioussister who came to see him, who
(17:19):
had been like a teacher when heand his sister were young in
their homeschooling, and PierGiorgio said to her, Do you
think I'll get to heaven?
And the sister assured him hewould.
Carlo did not also presume onhis own sanctity.
(17:47):
He also was wondering aboutwhether he could make it to
heaven.
And we know that because hismother wrote that he came to
know San Francisco Marto, one ofthe three Fatima children, and
(18:10):
when he heard that Our Lady saidthat Francisco would get to
heaven but he had to say manyrosaries, he remarked that if
Francisco was so kind and simplebut had to say so many rosaries
to get to heaven, He said, howcould I ever earn it, since in
comparison I am less saintly?
It's interesting too, isn't it,that although it's a hundred
(18:38):
years since Pier Giorgio died,and 19 years since Carlo died,
we still remember them.
And many people who lived threetimes longer than Pier Giorgio
we have forgotten about.
But the witness of the lives ofthese two young saints
(19:04):
resonates so powerfully with us.
And they are great examples andmentors for young people, most
particularly for young men.
Inside both of them, was afertile terrain that was ready
to welcome divine grace and theurges of the Holy Spirit.
(19:29):
All of us have that, but thesetwo young men had it to an
exceptional level, and they madeit to heaven, even though they
weren't sure they would.
So let us pray to these twoyoung saints.
(19:50):
Let us ask that they inspire uswith all the virtues that they
had through the grace of God andtheir cooperation with it.
And the last thing I'll say isPier Giorgio said to his
friends, they were hisuniversity friends, said to them
(20:12):
that the first one of us to getto heaven has to pull the
others up, using that mountainclimbing imagery.
So let us pray that PierGiorgio and Carlo would pull us
up to heaven.
Saint Pier Giorgio and SaintCarlo, pray for us.
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