At Treviso in Italy, Blessed Andrew Hyacinth Longhin, bishop, who amid the storms of war strenuously came to the aid of the needs of refugees and prisoners, and in the hardships of his time with singular solicitude defended the rights of workers, farmers, and all the poor of society.
Lifespan: 1863–1936
Beatified: 20 October 2002 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 26 June
He proved himself a father to his priests and a zealous shepherd of the people, always at the side of his faithful, especially in moments of difficulty and danger.
Andrew Hyacinth Longhin is the bishop whom Saint Pius X gave to Treviso, the diocese of his own origins — a Capuchin friar of deep spirituality and solid doctrine. Together with his Church, he lived heroically through one of the most difficult and exhilarating seasons of Italian Catholicism at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
He was born on 23 November 1863 at Fiumicello di Campodarsego (in the province and diocese of Padua), the son of Matteo and Giuditta Marin, tenant farmers who were poor and deeply devout. The following day he was baptized with the names Giacinto Bonaventura. He revealed his vocation to the priesthood and religious life at an early age; at sixteen he began his novitiate in the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin under the name Andrea da Campodarsego. Having completed his humanistic studies in Padua and his theological studies in Venice, he was ordained a priest at the age of twenty-three on 19 June 1886. For eighteen years he served as spiritual director and teacher of young religious, proving himself a sure guide and an enlightened master. In 1902 he was elected provincial minister of the Venetian Capuchins. It was at this time, in Venice, that he was ‘discovered’ by Patriarch Sarto, who engaged him in preaching and in many delicate diocesan ministries.
Pius X had been Pope for only a few months when, on 13 April 1904, he personally appointed Friar Andrea Bishop of Treviso and wished him to be consecrated in Rome, a few days later, in the church of Trinità dei Monti, by Cardinal Merry del Val.
The new shepherd entered his diocese on the following 6 August, having sent ahead two pastoral letters outlining his programme of reform. The following year he began his first pastoral visitation, which lasted nearly five years: he wished to come to know his Church, among the largest and most populous in the Veneto; he wanted to establish personal contact with his clergy, to whom he would devote his pastoral care; he also intended to draw near to the organized laity, who at that very time were being subjected to severe trials in the context of the Catholic social movement. He concluded the visitation with the celebration of a Synod, which was to carry out in the diocese the reforms initiated by Pius X, equip the local Church to be ‘militant,’ and call all — priests and laity alike — to holiness of life.
He reformed the diocesan Seminary, improving the quality of its studies and spiritual formation; he promoted the Spiritual Exercises for the Clergy and, through a programme of ongoing formation that he himself outlined annually, guided their pastoral action with precise directives, which he assessed in the three subsequent pastoral visitations.
When the First World War broke out (1915–1918), Treviso lay on the front line: the city endured enemy incursions and the first aerial bombardments, which destroyed the city and more than fifty parishes. Bishop Longhin remained at his post even after the civil authorities had departed, and he required his priests to do the same, unless they needed to accompany their refugee populations. He guided the fate of the city with heroic courage; he was a religious, moral, and civic point of reference for all the communities swept up in the conflict; he provided for the care of soldiers, the sick, and the poor. Heartening all, he never yielded to partisan spirit or wartime rhetoric; yet he was accused of defeatism, and some of his priests were put on trial and convicted.
In the laborious years of material and spiritual reconstruction, he resumed the second pastoral visitation he had interrupted. Amid the grave social tensions that divided Catholics themselves, the Bishop proved a sure guide: with evangelical fortitude he pointed out that social justice and peace demanded the narrow way of nonviolence and Catholic unity. The Fascist movement was growing in strength; at Treviso it gave rise to episodes of violence directed especially against Catholic organizations. From 1926 to 1934 Bishop Longhin carried out his third pastoral visitation in order to strengthen the faith of the parish communities: the Church Militant, in his understanding, was a Church wholly oriented toward holiness and prepared for martyrdom.
Pope Pius XI held him in high esteem and entrusted him with the delicate office of Apostolic Visitor, first to Padua and then to Udine, to restore peace to those dioceses troubled by divisions between the clergy and their bishop.
God willed to purify his faithful servant through an illness that progressively deprived him of his mental faculties, which he bore with extraordinary faith and total abandonment to the will of God. He died on 26 June 1936.
A reputation for holiness had accompanied him even during his lifetime, on account of his heroic charity and his wise evangelical leadership. After his death, devotion to the holy pastor grew stronger and spread rapidly, especially in the dioceses of Treviso and Padua, and throughout the Capuchin Order, extolling his virtues and invoking his intercession. In 1964 his cause for beatification was introduced. That same year a young man, Dino Stella, was healed of diffuse peritonitis through Longhin’s intercession — a miracle that was recognized for his beatification.