Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows

Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, in the world Francesco Possenti, was an Italian cleric of the Passionist congregation. He died before he was twenty-four, without having reached ordination to the priesthood. The Church commemorates him on February 27.

He was born on March 1, 1838, in Assisi. He was the eleventh of the thirteen children of Sante Possenti, an official of the Papal States, and Agnese Frisciotti. He lost his mother in early childhood, and it was above all his elder sister Maria Luisa who looked after him. He grew up in Spoleto, where his father held office. There he studied first with the Christian Brothers and then at the Jesuit college.

He was a gifted pupil, lively, witty, and well liked in company. He cared about fashionable clothes, loved to dance, went to the theater, and read novels. At the same time he felt drawn to religious life. Twice, when seriously ill, he promised God to enter a religious order and, once he had recovered, forgot his promise. He was deeply affected by the death of his sister Maria Luisa, who died of cholera in 1855. His father, however, tried to turn him away from the thought of the cloister.

The turning point came in August 1856, during a procession in which the image of the Mother of God venerated in the cathedral of Spoleto was carried. Francesco felt Mary’s gaze upon him and heard in his heart that the world was not for him and that religious life awaited him. He sought the advice of the Jesuits and chose the Passionists. In September, at the age of eighteen, he left for the novitiate at Morrovalle, praying at Loreto on the way. On September 21, 1856, he received the habit and the name Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows.

In religious life he found joy. He wrote to his family that he would not exchange a quarter of an hour of prayer before the image of Mary for a year of his former amusements. In September 1857 he made his religious vows. He studied philosophy at Pieve Torina, and from July 1859 he studied theology in the monastery at Isola del Gran Sasso in Abruzzo. He had a special devotion to the Passion of the Lord, the Eucharist, and Our Lady of Sorrows, and he remembered the poor as well.

On May 25, 1861, in the cathedral of Penne, he received the tonsure and the four minor orders, among them that of acolyte. Ordination to the priesthood never came: first the troubled times stood in the way, then tuberculosis. He died on February 27, 1862, at Isola del Gran Sasso, pressing to his breast an image of the Crucified and of Our Lady of Sorrows. He was buried there, and crowds of pilgrims, many of them young, come every year to the shrine at his tomb.

Pope Pius X beatified him on May 31, 1908, and Benedict XV canonized him on May 13, 1920, together with Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. In the bull of canonization he noted that Gabriel’s life was hidden and stood out for nothing extraordinary, which shows that every one of the faithful can reach holiness. In 1926 the saint became co-patron of Italian Catholic youth, and in 1959 John XXIII proclaimed him patron of Abruzzo.