A Life of Catholic Action

Extract

He professed his belief in God openly, regarding his religious convictions as a soldier on active service does his uniform, which he wears always and never exchanges for another dress ... In times like these this, so to say, intransigent Christian, can teach us all a lesson.’ In these words an Italian socialist newspaper summed up a student of the University of Turin who died in July, 1925, at the age of twenty-four. The man who made such an impression upon those who did not share his faith was Pier Giorgio Frassati, an engineering student, the son of a former Italian Ambassador in Berlin, an athlete and mountaineer, goodlooking, gay and popular, who, during his short life had made himself so beloved among the poor and among his fellow students that his funeral was something like a pilgrimage.

The life of Frassati is a shining example of that apostolate of the laity which Pius XI calls Catholic Action, and since there is very little literature in English to make clear how Catholic Action works out in practice, those who wish to know more about it cannot do better than read the account of his life, translated from the Italian, which although rather too much abbreviated, gives a vivid picture of a most attractive personality.

Pier Giorgio was essentially of the laity: he had no wish to be a priest or religious. He would have proposed marriage to a girl with whom he was deeply in love, but for the fact that he knew that for some reason she would not be acceptable to his parents, and out of loyalty to them he put the thought aside, at great sacrifice to himself.