By Eleanna Guglielmi
1925: Jubilee of Peace. 2025: Jubilee of Hope.
In between, a century of conflicts, wars, and division. Yet one young man from Turin, who died at 24, connects these two Jubilees: Pier Giorgio Frassati. He lived as a friend of Christ and a brother to all, by name and by choice.
But who is this young man whom Pope Leo XIV will declare a saint on Sep 7?
His story is told through the voices of Catholic Action members from Italy, Spain, and Argentina—young people and leaders who call him both brother and teacher of everyday life. His everyday being that became holiness and his prayer life that directed him toward God and toward others, politics understood as charity.
What kind of peace?
On Jul 6, 1925, Frassati’s coffin passed through the streets of Turin. It wasn’t accompanied by dignitaries, but by an anonymous crowd of the poor. A hundred years later, a Mass of canonization will publicly recognize this young man who took the Gospel seriously, with no compromises.
Frassati died during the Holy Year of Peace. He will be made a saint during the Holy Year of Hope.
Two distant eras, connected by a question that remains ever-so relevant today: what kind of peace can we hope for?
A man in love
Who was this young man who continues to speak to us a century after his death? He is not a statue nor an abstract hero. “To us, he’s a true brother,” say the young people of Catholic Action, part of the canonization process.
Catholic Action, founded in 1922, is an association of lay people focused on advocating for a greater Catholic influence in society.
Together with other groups—the Dominicans, the Vincentians, and various dioceses—they carry Frassati’s legacy forward. From Italy to Argentina to Spain, his witness still resonates.
“We heard the news of his canonization during the 2024 National Assembly,” recalls Lorenzo Zardi, vice president of Catholic Action Youth. “We were overjoyed—it was something we had hoped and waited for, for a long time.”
To him, Frassati is a man in love with Christ, with his hands in history:
“His path to holiness was simply about being faithful to the present moment, living the Gospel in everyday life. He wasn’t just a philanthropist—he didn’t wait for the poor to come to him. He went to them.”
He wasn’t content with random acts of kindness. He wanted gestures that produced greater good. Frassati was a student who chose to “serve Christ among the miners,” a young man who lived politics as a form of civic passion, “always in service of the common good, starting with the least.” He built the kind of friendship that could be the foundation of peace.
Zardi describes the lead-up to the canonization as a time to “train the heart”: pilgrimages along the “Frassati Trails”, a new museum space in Turin, and the publication of the text, Di santa ragione.
“We’ve kept sharing his story with young people—and rediscovering it ourselves in the process.”
The saint of Mondays
To Agnese Palmucci, youth leader of Catholic Action in Rome, Frassati is “a brother—not a distant saint. A real, normal young man who shows us what everyday holiness looks like.”
“We call ourselves the ‘Monday people,’” she explains. “Because Sunday should carry on into every day and he’s the saint of Mondays, the one who shows us how to sanctify ordinary life.”
“What’s beautiful about him,” she adds, “is how clearly we can see the source of everything he did. Without that source, even our activism becomes empty.” His friendship, she says, “was incarnate. His charity was hidden.” At his funeral, it was the poor who told his parents who he truly was.
“He was outraged by injustice. He never bowed to fascism. But he always kept his gaze ‘toward the heights.’ He challenges us still—not a saint for a niche, but a real example that makes you say: I want to be like that too.”
In Rome, his memory is alive through traveling exhibitions in parishes and reading groups centered on his letters. “You can see in him that prayer means bowing toward God and toward your brother, because he and I are equal—brothers.”
From the mountains to the digital world
From Buenos Aires, Claudia Carbajal, president of Catholic Action Argentina, highlights a key part of Frassati’s legacy: “He shows us that friendship rooted in Christ is a shared path to holiness.”
