Blessed Carlo Gnocchi (Don Gnocchi)

Who was Blessed Carlo Gnocchi?

Blessed Carlo Gnocchi, known all over Italy as Don Gnocchi, was a priest of Milan who went to war as chaplain to the Alpini, Italy's mountain troops, and came back to spend the rest of his life on the children the war had left broken. In the snows of Russia he promised dying soldiers he would look after their children. He kept the promise, and the work he founded for war orphans and maimed children, the "mutilatini," is today the Fondazione Don Gnocchi. He died in 1956 and was beatified in Milan on October 25, 2009. We keep his feast on October 25.

A priest for the young

Carlo Gnocchi was born on October 25, 1902, at San Colombano al Lambro, a small town between Milan and Lodi. He studied in the seminaries of the archdiocese of Milan and was ordained a priest on June 6, 1925. After a year at Cernusco sul Naviglio he served from 1926 to 1936 as curate of San Pietro in Sala, then the largest parish in the archdiocese.

His gift was for the young. He was named spiritual director at the Istituto Gonzaga of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in 1936, served as chaplain to university students, and wrote books on education and the spiritual direction of young people through the 1930s. In 1945 he wrote a line, here in our translation, that sums up everything that followed: "I understand that today only charity can save the world, and that one must give oneself to it entirely."

Chaplain of the Alpini

When Italy entered the Second World War, many of his students were called up, and Don Gnocchi volunteered to go with them. In March 1941 he went to the Greek-Albanian front as chaplain to the Julia Alpine Division, and in July 1942 he left for Russia with the Tridentina Division. His book Cristo con gli alpini (Christ with the Alpini) first appeared in 1942.

The retreat from the Don began on January 17, 1943. In the bitter cold of the Russian winter the Italian columns fought their way west through the snow. Don Gnocchi went from man to man, and many of the dying asked him to look after their families. He nearly died himself: a young army doctor, Lieutenant Rolando Prada, saved him from freezing. He reached Italy again on March 18, 1943.

In 1944 he was put in charge of a home for badly disabled veterans at Arosio. He helped the Resistance under the code name "Chino," and in October 1944 the SS arrested him and held him for ten days at San Vittore prison in Milan.

Father of the mutilatini

At Arosio he took in the orphans of the Alpini, and then children maimed by bombs and by the mines and shells left lying in the fields. The first child amputee, Paolo Balducci, arrived on December 8, 1945. On October 12, 1948, Don Gnocchi founded the Federation for Maimed Children in Milan, which became the Fondazione Pro Juventute in 1951. Colleges opened in quick succession at Pessano, Inverigo, Turin, Parma and Rome, and the work grew to welcome orphans and other children on the margins. He worked hand in hand with the sons of St. Luigi Orione, the Brothers of the Christian Schools and a great many lay helpers.

Illness and the gift of his eyes

He fell gravely ill in January 1956 and was taken to the Columbus clinic in Milan. On February 26 he called in Professor Cesare Galeazzi and made him promise to give his corneas to two blind teenagers. He died on February 28, 1956, at a quarter to seven in the evening, and on February 29 his corneas went to Silvio Colagrande and Amabile Battistello. His gift became famous. That May, Pope Pius XII cited it in speaking in favor of organ transplantation. His funeral on March 1 filled Milan's cathedral, and his last book, Pedagogia del dolore innocente (The Pedagogy of Innocent Suffering), came out after his death.

The miracle and beatification

The archdiocese of Milan opened his cause in 1987, and John Paul II recognized his heroic virtues on December 20, 2002. The miracle approved for his beatification concerned Sperandio Aldeni, an electrician from Villa d'Adda and a volunteer at the foundation's center in Inverigo. In 1979, working in an electrical cabin at Orsenigo, he took a discharge of about 15,000 volts. Sure he was dying, he called on the Lord, the Madonna and Don Gnocchi, and asked him, "How will I get back to your children?" He recovered with no lasting tissue damage, which the medical experts found inexplicable. The decree on the miracle was promulgated on January 17, 2009, and Don Gnocchi was beatified in Milan on October 25, 2009.

Symbols of Blessed Carlo Gnocchi in art

Don Gnocchi lived in the age of photography, and his images follow his photographs. Look for:

• The Alpini hat with its long black feather: he served with the mountain troops in Albania and Russia.
• The chaplain's greatcoat over a cassock.
• Children on crutches or with missing limbs around him: his mutilatini.
• A stole: the priest who heard the confessions of the dying in the snow.

Feast day, sanctuary and prayer

We keep his feast on October 25. His body rests in an urn at the foot of the altar in the Diocesan Sanctuary of Blessed Don Gnocchi, at the foundation's Santa Maria Nascente center in Milan, consecrated on October 24, 2010. A museum next door keeps his field altar, his boots and Alpini hat, and even his little Fiat Topolino. See also the feast day calendar.

The Fondazione Don Gnocchi has an official prayer for his intercession in Italian, published on its website. With him let us pray for children who suffer, for the disabled and those who care for them, for organ donors and for soldiers far from home. He told his young people: "Nothing is more sanctifying and saving than holiness. Believe it." Blessed Carlo Gnocchi, pray for us.