26 November: Saint Leonard of Porto Maurizio
Apostle of the Way of the Cross
Paolo Girolamo Casanova, better known as Saint Leonard of Porto Maurizio, was born in Porto Maurizio—today’s Imperia—on 20 December 1676. At a very young age he moved to Rome to complete his studies at the Roman College and, fascinated by the austere life of two friars at the Retreat of San Bonaventura on the Palatine Hill, decided to enter the Order of Friars Minor at the age of twenty-one, taking the Franciscan habit in the convent of Santa Maria in Ponticelli.
When, as a young man, he asked Cardinal Colloredo to be sent as a missionary to China, the prelate replied that “his China would be Italy.” Thus, the land he would evangelize was not a distant one, but the very peninsula where he had been born. There he dedicated more than forty years to preaching and evangelization, bringing the Christian message from the Kingdom of Naples to the Republic of Genoa, from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the Papal States, and even to Corsica.
Despite his dreams of a faraway mission, Leonard’s life proved that early eighteenth-century Italy, too, needed tireless missionaries capable of bringing God to ordinary people and of making preaching not only an act of devotion, but a true service to the populace.
He devoted his entire life to preaching, always guided by the memory of Christ’s Passion. His devotion to the Virgin Mary and to the Holy Name of Jesus was constant, and the theme of the Way of the Cross—typically Franciscan—held a central place in his prayers and in his missions, becoming, thanks to him, a very widespread practice among the faithful.
His sermons drew large crowds, who were struck by his words and moved by his spirituality. Saint Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori called him the greatest missionary of his time, while Benedict XIV described him as a “hunter of souls for heaven.” His apostolic journeys took him to every corner of Italy, where he succeeded in resolving civil tensions with remarkable results.
Despite the physical exhaustion brought on by his missionary labors, Leonard continued to work tirelessly. During the Holy Year of 1750, at the Pope’s request, he organized the spiritual preparation of the faithful and erected in the Colosseum fourteen chapels for the Way of the Cross and a great cross, effectively saving the monument from abandonment and decay.
He died on 25 November 1751 at the Retreat of San Bonaventura on the Palatine Hill, leaving behind a reputation for holiness already well established among Romans and beyond. Pope Pius VI beatified him in 1796, and Pius IX canonized him in 1867. In 1923 Pius XI declared him patron of missionaries in Catholic countries, and since the 1990s Saint Leonard has also been venerated as the Patron Saint of the city of Imperia.