From the mountain to the sky: the life and message of Pier Giorgio Frassati

From the mountains to heaven: the life and message of Pier Giorgio Frassati, the boy who loved the mountains and God, an example of charity and Christian love

In the alpine silence, when the wind sings between the peaks and the earth becomes sky, the echo of young, decisive, humble steps still resounds. They are the footsteps of Pier Giorgio Frassati, a young man in love with altitude and charity, a burning spirit in a century on fire.
In the heart of the twentieth century, while Europe stumbles between wars and revolutions, this young Turin man has chosen to climb towards another peak: that of holiness lived in everyday life, among university books, rock paths, and among the poor, to be heard with his heart before even with his hands.
His is not a remote or discoloured story, but a torch still lit. Pier Giorgio is not a niche saint, but a travel companion for those who, today, try to combine faith and life without renouncing joy, action, and beauty.

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The life of Pier Giorgio Frassati

Born in Turin on 6 April 1901, Pier Giorgio was the son of an illustrious family: his father, Alfredo, was a senator and founder of La Stampa, and his mother, Adelaide, was a refined painter. He could have become a bourgeois scion, cultured and distant. Instead, he transforms into a soulful giant, discreet and tireless, devoted to an ideal higher than any career: serving Christ in the brothers.
A mining engineering student at the Polytechnic, he dreamt of descending into the earth’s depths to help miners. But in the meantime, he rose high, in the Alps, where sweat mixes with prayer, where every summit is an altar and every path an offering.
Pier Giorgio does not evangelise with sermons, but with gestures. He walked among the last of his city, bringing bread, clothes, medicines, but above all smiles, listening, and presence. His charity was as silent as snow, yet it leaves deep traces.
He was active in FUCI and Catholic Action. He is a young man who thought, acted, argued, and loved with all the intelligence of his heart. One of his most famous phrases is an existential manifesto: “Live, not scrape by”. It is an invitation addressed to everyone, a shock to sleeping consciences, a battle song against lukewarmness.  His political commitment is embodied in his membership in the Popular Party of Don Luigi Sturzo, where he fights with democratic and social conviction. Pier Giorgio understands that the Christian faith cannot remain confined to private contemplation, but must be translated into a concrete commitment to building a more just and fraternal society. His political positions, often in contrast to those of his liberal father, testify to his independence of judgment and consistency with his principles.

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At the heart of this inner journey, Pier Giorgio felt the need to consecrate himself more deeply to the Lord and entered the Dominican Order as a tertiary. His membership as a Dominican tertiary reflected the desire to combine contemplation and action, embodying the Dominican motto Contemplata aliis tradere, “to transmit to others what has been contemplated”. In this way, Pier Giorgio integrated Dominican spirituality into his daily life, witnessing to a faith lived with coherence and depth.

Not everything in Pier Giorgio Frassati’s life was austerity and sacrifice. On the contrary, his holiness was mixed with laughter, strenuous walks and absurd nicknames, as befits those who knew how to live the Gospel with a young and cheerful heart.
On 18 May 1924, during a trip to the Pian della Mussa, between the sparkling air of the high altitude and the noise of the flowing water, the Company of Shady Types was born: a name that seemed a joke, but that hid a very high project. Behind the cheerful faces and the goliardic proclamations, there was a burning desire to live an authentic, deep friendship, founded on faith and prayer. Pier Giorgio was its soul and engine. To one of his friends, he wrote:
 “I would like us to swear to a pact that knows no earthly boundaries or time limits: union in prayer.”
That spiritual bond united the “delinquents” of the company, young people passionate about God and life, who, between trips and jokes, experienced a new, prophetic way of being the Church: a cheerful, alive, and incarnated Church over time. The Shady Types were not just a group of friends, but a small lay fraternity ahead of its time, which brought together faith, friendship, nature, play, and responsibility. A spiritual alliance that surpassed mere company and became a gym of daily holiness. And so, among the rocks and prayers, among the laughter and contemplative silences, Pier Giorgio taught that one can be a saint without ceasing to be young. Indeed, perhaps the truest holiness is that which knows how to laugh, love and walk upwards together.

Among the peaks climbed and the roads beaten to help the poor, Pier Giorgio Frassati’s heart also knew the intimacy of the sweetest and most tormented feeling: human love, that which is born silent, burns strong and, sometimes, remains hidden forever. He was 22 years old when he met Laura Hidalgo, a young woman of simple origin, and he was deeply impressed. He fell in love with the fullness of a pure heart, without ambiguity, without ulterior motives. But he never dared to declare himself. The young Frassati, son of a wealthy Turin family and part of a family with strict standards, was afraid of hurting his loved ones or disappointing them. With that delicacy that had always been the key to his life, he chose to remain silent.

In July 1925, Pier Giorgio suddenly fell ill: poliomyelitis fulminans. He died without fuss in a few days, as he had lived. He was 24. But at the funeral, next to the family, there is an unexpected crowd: poor people, beggars, children, the elderly, everyone he had loved in secret. He was already, for many, a saint.

What miracles Pier Giorgio Frassati did

The miracles recognised by the Church are not only extraordinary facts, but visible traces of the invisible, signs of a presence that continues to act in the heart of the world.

The first, which paved the way for beatification, happened in the 1930s to Domenico Sellan, a young Friulian suffering from Pott’s disease, a severe form of bone tuberculosis that had brought him to the brink of death. When human hopes seemed to have vanished, a priest friend handed him a picture with a small relic of Pier Giorgio Frassati. With the simple and heartfelt faith of those who no longer have anything to lose, Domenico prayed to the blessed young man with all his soul. Within hours, the disease gave way to healing. The doctors could not explain, but he did: it was Pier Giorgio, his invisible brother, who had bent over him.

The miracle that opened the doors to canonisation, on the other hand, is recent and comes from across the ocean, among the sunny streets of California. The protagonist is Juan Manuel Gutierrez, a young priest born near Mexico City and a seminarian in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. After a troubled adolescence and a spiritual rebirth that leads him to his vocation, Juan Manuel finds himself one step away from ordination when, playing basketball with his companions, he breaks his Achilles tendon. Surgical intervention is often inevitable, but it comes with risks and costs that put it in crisis. That’s when, after watching a YouTube video dedicated to Pier Giorgio, he relies on him in prayer, almost instinctively, almost desperately. On 1 November 2017, during a moment of silent prayer, he felt a sudden and profound warmth in his ankle. He stood up. And walked. And he discovered that the injury was gone. MRI confirmed what science could not explain.

In these two miracles, separated by decades and continents, the same mystery is reflected: Pier Giorgio never stopped walking alongside those who suffer, climbing with us the most challenging mountains of life. But Pier Giorgio’s true miracles are also those that are not measured in clinical reports: they are lives changed, vocations born, young people found, hearts that have rediscovered the beauty of the Gospel thanks to him. His intercession continues to accompany those who invoke him. He hasn’t stopped climbing the mountains. Climb them with us.

When Pier Giorgio Frassati will be canonised

On 20 May 1990, in a St. Peter’s Square filled with young faces and shining eyes, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Pier Giorgio Frassati blessed, calling him with words that will resound in hearts forever: “The man of the eight beatitudes.”
With that gesture, the Church recognised him as a model for everyone, and in particular for young people, capable of seeking holiness in daily simplicity, between study, social commitment, prayer and true friendship.

On 25 November 2024, Pope Francis signed the decree recognising the second miracle. It is the green light towards canonisation. We now know: Pier Giorgio Frassati will be declared a saint on 7 September 2025. A day awaited, dreamed of, prayed for by thousands of faithful around the world, and especially by those young people who see in him not a distant icon, but a brother, a fellow member of a band, a concrete example of possible holiness.
The choice of this date is not accidental: it is the centenary of his death, which took place on 4 July 1925. An exact century to cross history with a slight but decisive step, as you do in the mountains, and reach that summit that is canonisation: the official recognition of a life given without reservations, lived above, “upwards”. The ceremony will be held in St. Peter’s Square, where tens of thousands of young pilgrims will flock from every corner of the world. It will not only be a ritual, but a celebration —an explosion of joy and light, the culmination of a journey begun between the streets of Turin and the peaks of the Alps, now reached heaven.

Pier Giorgio will be canonised together with Carlo Acutis. The celebrations will be part of the Jubilee. Turin also prepares with a heart swollen with pride, and from all over the world, thousands of people will come to Rome to pay homage to those who have been able to transform ordinary life into a high, harsh, and beautiful way to God.

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