At Viareggio in Italy, Saint Anthony Mary Pucci, priest of the Order of the Servants of Mary, who, a parish priest for nearly fifty years, strove to care for children beset by poverty or disease.
Lifespan: 1819–1892
Beatified: 12 June 1952 by Pope Pius XII
Canonized: 9 December 1962 by Pope John XXIII
Memoria liturgica: 12 January
It is not necessary to have a long life, but it is necessary to make use of the hour that God gives us to do our duty.
Eustachio Pucci was born at Poggiole di Vernio in the province of Florence on 16 April 1819, into a farming family poor in means but rich in faith. His favourite pastime was helping his father tend to the adornment of the church, attending the liturgical offices, and receiving Holy Communion.
In upper Tuscany of the nineteenth century a young man’s labour in the fields was counted a necessity, yet when the Lord called him he went, choosing a religious Order consecrated to Our Lady: the Servants of Mary.
Ordained a priest in 1883, he went on to serve as Definitor General of his community, but it was above all the work of a parish priest that he cherished, at the church of Sant’Andrea in Viareggio, where he remained for forty-eight years. To everyone, Father Anthony Mary — the name he took on pronouncing his vows — was il curatino, the little curate, always smiling and above all always ready to help others.
A forerunner of the organisational forms proper to Catholic Action, he established practically an association for every member of his parish, giving great impetus to lay engagement within the Church: for young men he founded the Company of Saint Aloysius and the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; for the men of the parish, the Company of Our Lady of Sorrows; and for the women, the Confraternity of Christian Mothers. He also gave rise to a women’s religious order: the Mantellate of Viareggio, who would devote themselves to the care of sick children.
Although he needed assistance for his many works, Anthony was the first to get his hands dirty, going from house to house among the poor to bring them what they needed. For himself he kept nothing, not even clothing. And in his seemingly endless days, he did not neglect prayer: his parishioners often found him absorbed in contemplation, and some even observed him rise from the ground or move without his feet touching it in the course of his ministry, so that many would exclaim: “He seems an angel!”
And such in truth was Father Anthony, who during the cholera epidemic of 1854 became the angel of the sick. His was a heroic exercise of charity that wore him down physically until he contracted a sudden, severe pneumonia in 1892, the year of his death.
He was beatified by Pius XII in 1952 and canonised by John XXIII ten years later.