Saint Luigi Orione

Saint Luigi Orione was an Italian priest of Tortona, a pupil of Saint John Bosco and the founder of the Little Work of Divine Providence, a religious family serving orphans, the poor, the sick and the abandoned. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on March 12, the day of his death.

He was born on June 23, 1872, in Pontecurone, in the diocese of Tortona. His father was a road paver, and for three years the boy helped him at his work. At thirteen he entered the Franciscans at Voghera, but pneumonia forced him to return to his family. From 1886 to 1889 he was a pupil at the Valdocco Oratory in Turin. Saint John Bosco counted him among his favorite pupils and assured him: “We will always be friends.”

In October 1889 he began his studies at the seminary of Tortona. While still a seminarian he opened the first oratory for boys there in 1892, and a year later a boarding school for poor youths. He was ordained a priest on April 13, 1895. From the seminarians and priests who gathered around him grew the male congregation of the Little Work, the Sons of Divine Providence, approved by the Bishop of Tortona on March 21, 1903.

After the earthquake of December 1908, Don Orione hurried to Reggio Calabria and Messina to bring help to the survivors, especially the orphans. By the will of Pope Pius X he became vicar general of the diocese of Messina and remained in Sicily for three years. He brought help in the same way after the earthquake in the Marsica region in January 1915.

In 1915 he began the Congregation of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity, and in 1927 a contemplative branch of blind Sacramentine Sisters. On the outskirts of large cities in Italy and South America he opened, for those who suffered most and were most in need, houses called “Little Cottolengo.” His religious took up work in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Palestine and, in 1923, Poland; he himself traveled twice to Latin America. He used to repeat that only charity will save the world.

He had a special love for Poland. John Paul II recalled that in September 1939, when the country was invaded, Don Orione carried the white and red flag in procession to the shrine of Our Lady and then had it hung in his poor room in Tortona. On the evening of March 8, 1940, taking his leave before departing for Sanremo, he said: “I love the Poles so much. I have loved them since I was a boy; I have always loved them... Always love these brothers of yours.”

Suffering from heart disease, he let himself be persuaded to rest in a house of the congregation in Sanremo, though he said that he wished to live and die not among the palm trees but among the poor. He died there on March 12, 1940, with the words: “Jesus! Jesus! I am going.” His body rests in Tortona, in the shrine of the Madonna della Guardia, which he himself built. John Paul II beatified him on October 26, 1980, and declared him a saint on May 16, 2004.