Blessed Giovanni Maria Boccardo, Father of the Poor of Pancalieri

Who was Blessed Giovanni Maria Boccardo?

Blessed Giovanni Maria Boccardo was a country parish priest near Turin who became, in the words his sisters still use, "father of the poor." For thirty-one years he was pastor of Pancalieri, a farming town on the plain south of Turin. When cholera struck in 1884 he gave everything he had to the sick, and out of that experience came a congregation of sisters who still care for the elderly today. Pope John Paul II beatified him in Turin on May 24, 1998, and we keep his memorial on November 20.

The life of Blessed Giovanni Maria Boccardo

A priest who wanted a cloister

Giovanni Maria was born in Moncalieri, just outside Turin, on November 20, 1848, the eldest of ten children. He was ordained a priest in 1871. He hoped to enter a religious order, but his archbishop had other plans and told him, "Your Order is the Seminary." He served first as assistant and then as spiritual director of young seminarians, at Chieri and in Turin.

Pastor of Pancalieri

In 1882 he was sent as parish priest to Pancalieri, and he stayed for the rest of his life. On the day he arrived, he told the people: "I come to you, my dear ones, to live as one of you, your father, brother and friend, and to share with you the joys and sorrows of life... I come to you as the servant of all." He took the holy Curé of Ars as his model and tried to show his parishioners the way to heaven more by example than by words.

The cholera of 1884

Two years later cholera swept through Pancalieri. The sisters he later founded record that he spent all his strength, and all his money, on the sick. He went from bed to bed himself, and young people of the parish came to help him.

The Poor Daughters of St. Cajetan

The epidemic left him with a question: who would care for the old, the sick and the abandoned once the emergency was over? He prayed, took advice and, when he was sure of God's will, began a work of charity and then a religious congregation, the Poor Daughters of St. Cajetan. The first young women he formed were, his sisters say, ready for any sacrifice with a smile on their faces. The first to be consecrated was Carlotta Fontana, Sister Gaetana, now honored as Venerable.

He chose St. Cajetan as their patron. Cajetan of Thiene, the 16th-century founder of the Theatines, was famous for trusting in Divine Providence alone, and that was the spirit Boccardo wanted: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness" (Matthew 6:33). The congregation opened its first house outside Pancalieri at Saluzzo in 1896 and spread through Piedmont and later abroad.

His death

His last years were years of suffering, thirty-one months of illness. He died at Pancalieri on December 30, 1913, with his sisters praying around him and his brother, Canon Luigi Boccardo, at his side. In his will he left the congregation to Luigi as its superior. Luigi, too, was later beatified.

His holiness in his own words

Two short sayings, preserved by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, show the heart of the man. He wrote: "Yes, my God, what You want, I want too." And when someone asked him if it was very hard to reach heaven, he answered, "Be devoted to Mary, who is its Gate, and you will enter." He called himself all his life a devoted son of Our Lady.

Beatification

Pope John Paul II beatified Giovanni Maria Boccardo in Turin on May 24, 1998, together with the young martyr Teresa Bracco and Teresa Grillo Michel. In his homily the Pope said that Boccardo "knew how to bend down over every human misery with the spirit of St. Cajetan of Thiene."

• Approved: a miracle was recognized for his beatification, as the Church requires for a non-martyr; the published sources we consulted do not describe it.

Symbols of Blessed Giovanni Maria Boccardo in art

He is shown as he appears in his photographs: a Piedmontese parish priest in a black cassock, often with a biretta and a rosary. It is fitting to picture him among the sick and the elderly he served. There is no older tradition of attributes for him.

Feast day and prayer

We keep his memorial on November 20, the day of his birth, as the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints gives it. Some calendars list December 30, the day he died. See the feast day calendar.

The Dicastery publishes an approved prayer for the intercession of Blesseds Giovanni Maria and Luigi Boccardo. It ends with these words (our translation from the Italian):

Comforted by the courageous witness to the Gospel given by the brothers Giovanni Maria and Luigi, we ask you that we may venerate them as Saints of the Church and grant, through their common intercession, the grace that we ardently implore from your goodness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Blessed Giovanni Maria Boccardo, father of the poor, pray for us.