At Turin in Italy, Saint Joseph Cafasso, priest, who devoted himself to advancing the clergy in piety and learning, and to reconciling to God the wretched held in prison or even condemned to death.
Lifespan: 1811–1860
Beatified: 3 May 1925 by Pope Pius XI
Canonized: 22 June 1947 by Pope Pius XII, Vatican Basilica
Memoria liturgica: 23 June
On the day of judgment the Lord will ask me whether I was a good priest and not a good member of parliament.
Joseph Cafasso was born on 15 January 1811 in Castelnuovo d’Asti, the same town as Saint John Bosco. He was the third of four children. The youngest, his sister Marianna, would become the mother of Blessed Joseph Allamano, founder of the Consolata Missionary Fathers and Sisters.
He was born into nineteenth-century Piedmont, a region marked by grave social problems but also by many saints who labored to address them. They were bound together by a total love of Christ and a deep charity toward the poorest — the grace of the Lord knows how to spread and multiply the seeds of holiness. Cafasso completed his secondary studies and two years of philosophy at the College of Chieri, and in 1830 moved to the theological seminary, where he was ordained priest in 1833.
Four months later he entered the place that would remain for him the fundamental and sole “stage” of his priestly life: the Ecclesiastical College of Saint Francis of Assisi in Turin. Having entered to deepen his pastoral formation, he there put to good use his gifts as a spiritual director and his great spirit of charity. A happy phrase of Saint John Bosco sums up the meaning of the educational work in that community: “at the Convitto one learned to be a priest.”
Joseph Cafasso sought to realize this model in the formation of young priests, so that they in turn might become formers of other priests, religious, and laypeople — a special and effective chain of formation. From his chair of moral theology he formed good confessors and spiritual directors, solicitous for the true spiritual good of the person, animated by a great balance between conveying the mercy of God and, at the same time, a keen and living sense of sin.
His secret was simple: to be a man of God; to do, in the small actions of daily life, “what can redound to the greater glory of God and to the benefit of souls.”
He loved the Lord wholly; he was animated by a deeply rooted faith, sustained by prolonged and profound prayer, and lived a sincere charity toward all. He knew moral theology, but he knew equally the situations and hearts of people, for whose good he cared as a good shepherd. Those who had the grace of being close to him were themselves transformed into good shepherds and skilled confessors. He showed all priests with clarity the holiness to be attained precisely in pastoral ministry.
But another element characterizes the ministry of this saint: attention to the least, in particular to prisoners, who in nineteenth-century Turin lived in inhuman and dehumanizing conditions. In this delicate service too, carried out for more than twenty years, he was always the good shepherd — understanding and compassionate, a quality perceived by the prisoners, who ended by being won over by that sincere love whose source was God himself.
As time passed, he favored a simple, down-to-earth catechesis, conducted through conversations and personal encounters. Respectful of each person’s circumstances, he addressed the great themes of the Christian life, speaking of trust in God, of adherence to his will, of the usefulness of prayer and the sacraments — whose culminating point is Confession, the encounter with God who has made himself for us infinite mercy. Those condemned to death were the object of his most special human and spiritual care. He accompanied to the scaffold, after hearing their confessions and administering the Eucharist to them, fifty-seven men condemned to death. He accompanied them with deep love until the last breath of their earthly existence.
He died on 23 June 1860, after a life offered entirely to the Lord and spent for his neighbor.