At Messina in Sicily, Italy, Saint Hannibal Mary Di Francia, priest, who founded the Congregations of the Rogationists of the Heart of Jesus and of the Daughters of Divine Zeal, to beseech the Lord that he would enrich his Church with holy priests; and, devoting great care to orphans, he stretched out the merciful hands of God to the needy.
Lifespan: 1851–1927
Beatified: 7 October 1990 by Pope John Paul II
Canonized: 16 May 2004 by Pope John Paul II, St. Peter’s Square
Memoria liturgica: 1 June
Pray, therefore, the Master of the harvest to send laborers into His harvest.
Hannibal Mary Di Francia was born in Messina on 5 July 1851 to the noblewoman Anna Toscano and to Francesco, a knight, Marquis of Santa Caterina dello Ionio, Pontifical Vice-Consul and Honorary Captain of the Navy. The third of four children, he was orphaned at only fifteen months by the premature death of his father. This bitter experience instilled in his soul a particular tenderness and a special love for orphans that would characterize his life and his educational approach.
He developed a great love for the Eucharist, so much so that he received permission — exceptional for those times — to receive Holy Communion daily. As a very young man, before the Blessed Sacrament solemnly exposed, he experienced what may be called an “understanding of the Rogate“: he discovered the necessity of prayer for vocations, which he would later find expressed in the Gospel verse: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray [Rogate] therefore the Master of the harvest to send laborers into His harvest” (cf. Matt 9:38; Luke 10:2). These words of the Gospel became the fundamental insight to which he devoted his entire life.
Of lively intellect and notable literary gifts, as soon as he heard the Lord’s call he responded generously, adapting these talents to his ministry. Having completed his studies, he was ordained a priest on 16 March 1878. Some months before this, a “providential” encounter with a nearly blind beggar brought him into contact with the sad social and moral reality of the poorest outlying district of Messina, known as the Case Avignone, and opened for him the path of that boundless love for the poor and for orphans that would become a fundamental characteristic of his life.
With the consent of his Bishop, he went to live in that “ghetto” and committed all his energies to the redemption of those unfortunate souls who appeared to his eyes, in the Gospel image, as “sheep without a shepherd.” It was an experience strongly marked by misunderstanding, difficulty, and hostility of every kind, which he overcame with great faith, seeing in the humble and marginalized the very person of Jesus Christ, and putting into practice what he called the “spirit of twofold charity: the evangelization and the assistance of the poor.”
In 1882 he established his orphanages, which were called antoniani because they were placed under the protection of Saint Anthony of Padua. His concern was not only to provide bread and work, but above all a complete education of the whole person in its moral and religious dimensions, offering those in his care a true family atmosphere that would foster the formative process of helping them to discover and follow God’s plan for their lives.
With a missionary spirit, he would have wished to embrace the orphans and poor of the whole world. But how was this possible? The word of the Rogate opened this possibility before him. And so he wrote:
“What are these few orphans who are saved and these few poor who are evangelized, compared with the millions who are lost and abandoned like a flock without a shepherd? … I sought a way out and found it — wide, immense — in those adorable words of our Lord Jesus Christ: Rogate ergo … It seemed to me then that I had found the secret of all good works and of the salvation of all souls.”
Hannibal had grasped that the Rogate was not a mere recommendation of the Lord, but an explicit command and an “infallible remedy.” This is why his charism must be understood as the animating principle of a providential foundation within the Church. Another important aspect to note is that he was ahead of his time in regarding the vocations of committed laypeople — parents, teachers, and even good rulers — as true vocations.
To realize his apostolic ideals within the Church and in the world, he founded two new religious families: in 1887 the Congregation of the Daughters of Divine Zeal, and ten years later the Congregation of the Rogationists. He wished the members of both Institutes — canonically approved on 6 August 1926 — to commit themselves to living the Rogate through a fourth vow.
In a petition of 1909 to Saint Pius X, Di Francia wrote:
“From my earliest youth I have devoted myself to that holy word of the Gospel: Rogate ergo. In my small charitable Institutes, an unceasing daily prayer rises up from the orphans, the poor, the priests, and the consecrated virgins, by which the Most Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, the Patriarch Saint Joseph, and the Holy Apostles are besought to provide the Holy Church abundantly with chosen and holy priests, with evangelical laborers for the mystical harvest of souls.”
To spread the prayer for vocations he promoted numerous initiatives: he maintained both written and personal contact with the Supreme Pontiffs of his day; he established the Sacra Alleanza (Sacred Alliance) for the clergy and the Pia Unione della Rogazione Evangelica (Pious Union of the Evangelical Rogation) for all the faithful. He founded a periodical with the evocative title Dio e il Prossimo (“God and Neighbor”) to draw the faithful to live by the same ideals.
“It is the whole Church,” he wrote, “that must officially pray for this purpose, since the mission of prayer to obtain good laborers is one that ought to stir the interest of every believer, every Christian to whom the good of all souls is dear — but above all the bishops, the pastors of the mystical flock, to whose care souls are entrusted and who are the living apostles of Jesus Christ.”
The annual World Day of Prayer for Vocations, instituted by Paul VI in 1964, may be considered the Church’s response to this intuition of his.
Great was his love for the priesthood, convinced that only through the work of numerous and holy priests is it possible to save humanity. He was deeply committed to the spiritual formation of seminarians, whom the Archbishop of Messina entrusted to his care. He often repeated that without solid spiritual formation, without prayer, “all the labors of bishops and seminary rectors generally come down to no more than an artificial cultivation of priests….”
He was himself, first of all, a good laborer of the Gospel and a priest after the Heart of God. His charity, described as “without calculation and without limits,” manifested itself with particular intensity toward priests in difficulty and toward cloistered nuns.
Already during his earthly life he was accompanied by a clear and genuine reputation for holiness, widespread at every level of society, so that when he died in Messina on 1 June 1927, comforted by the presence of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, whom he had loved so dearly throughout his earthly life, people said: “Let us go and see the sleeping saint.”
His funeral was a veritable apotheosis, duly recorded by the newspapers of the day in articles and photographs. The authorities were prompt in granting permission for him to be entombed in the Temple of the Evangelical Rogation, which he himself had desired and which is dedicated precisely to the “divine command”: “Pray the Master of the harvest to send laborers into His harvest.”