Sydney, Australia, Jul 16, 2008 / 21:01 pm
A thousand young people from Canada gathered at the Cathedral of Saint Mary in Sydney to venerate the relics of Pier Giorgio Frassati, an Italian blessed who died before reaching the age of 24 and who is one of the 10 patron saints of WYD 2008.
The Canadian youth met to pray vespers and to have Eucharistic adoration. Father Thomas Rosica presided at the event, with Wanda Gawronska, Pier Giorgio’s niece, present as well. According to the L’Osservatore Romano, Father Rosica recounted the life of the Italian Blessed by reflecting on the sermon on the mount in the gospel of Matthew.
“The beatitudes in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount are a recipe for extreme holiness. Each crisis the Church confronts, each crisis the world faces, is a crisis of saints. Ours is a time in which young people need true heroes,” he said.
In speaking about Frassati, Father Rosica said, “Pier Giorgio did not choose to be a priest or a religious, preferring instead to bear witness to the Gospel as a layman. He never founded a religious order or gave life to an ecclesial movement. He never led an army or was elected to public office. Death came for him before he could graduate. He was never able to begin a career. He was not able to discover what his vocation was. In summary, he was simply a young man in love with his family and friends, in love with the mountains and the ocean, but above all in love with God,” Father Rosica explained.