At Genoa in Liguria, Saint Francis Mary of Camporosso, religious of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, distinguished for his charity toward the poor, who, while a plague was raging, offered himself as a victim for the welfare of his neighbors and was himself stricken by the disease.
Lifespan: 1804–1866
Beatified: 30 June 1929 by Pope Pius XI
Canonized: 9 December 1962 by Pope John XXIII, Vatican Basilica
Memoria liturgica: 17 September
The “Holy Father”
Born Giovanni Croese on 27 December 1804, son of Giovanni Croese and Maria Antonia Garzo, in Camporosso (Imperia), he received from his mother—for whom faith was the light and strength of life—his first lessons in that simple and profound piety which was later to develop into the virtues of the Christian life and place the aureole of holiness around his head. Still a boy, he tended his father’s small flock; as he grew older, he helped his father in the hard work of the fields.
He received his First Communion on the feast of Corpus Domini in 1816, after which he fell gravely ill and recovered through the intercession of Our Lady of the Laghetto, venerated near Nice.
At the age of seventeen, having heard the voice of God calling him to a more perfect life, he entered among the Conventual Franciscans as a tertiary. But after fervent prayers to the Blessed Virgin, and with the counsel of enlightened religious, he embraced the religious life among the Capuchin Friars Minor, entering as a novice on 7 December 1825 with the new name of Francis Mary.
During the novitiate, the exquisite beauty of Friar Francis’s soul revealed itself, and there grew in him that ardor of charity for the Lord and for neighbor that was to make of him—this humble Capuchin lay brother—the benefactor of the entire city of Genoa.
As soon as the novitiate was completed, he was assigned to the convent of the Most Holy Conception in Genoa—first as an assistant in the kitchen and as infirmarian, then as the convent’s alms-gatherer, an office in which he spent approximately forty years, that is, almost the whole of his religious life. A life not rich in grand events, but full of light and of an ingeniously active and inexhaustible goodness. In the harbor district and the free-port area where Friar Francis’s activity was especially carried out, his tall, pleasant figure—full of modesty and grace—exercised an extraordinary charm on all who approached him.
Every human sorrow found in him a gentle word of comfort and a ray of Christian hope. The seafaring people in particular had recourse to him with a moving trust that has never diminished to this day.
It was from the very midst of the people that the cry of “Padre santo” arose to designate Friar Francis and to express the admiration and gratitude of all those who had been touched by the charity of this humble man.
When, in the summer of 1866, a fierce epidemic broke out in Genoa, it caused no surprise, but only deep emotion, to learn that the “Padre santo” had offered his life to the Lord as a holocaust, to bring an end to the scourge that had struck his beloved city. It was the supreme proof of love that the Capuchin lay brother offered to his suffering brethren—a proof accepted by God on 17 September 1866.
The cause of beatification, introduced on 9 August 1896, was brought to completion by Pius XI on 30 June 1929.