Originally published at Churchpop
While all saints were certainly normal people like you and me, some feel just a little bit more “human” than others. Enter Pier Giorgio Frassati, the devout young Italian who turned my traditional view of sanctity on its head.
I was first introduced to Blessed Pier Giorgio when I was a novice friar. As I scanned a display shelf in a Catholic bookstore, one of my classmates held a relatively thin paperback up to my face.
“You’ve got to read about this guy!” he said. “You’ll love him.” I looked at the book’s cover: teal with a black and white image of a man snow-shoeing across an unforgiving landscape. The subtitle read “Daredevil Athlete, Roguish Prankster, Unrelenting Activist, Unexpected Mystic.”
I grabbed the book from my brother. “Woah, how have I not heard of him before?” I asked rhetorically. Without even reading a page, I knew I was about to enter into the world of a real wildman: a Catholic Jeremiah Johnson, if you will.
The book’s pages, however, painted the picture of a much different character—one who, in many ways, was much more heroic than his photograph suggested, yet at the same time, as familiar as a lifelong friend.
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati was the