March 12: Saint Luigi Orione
In the service of charity toward the poorest
Luigi Orione was born on June 23, 1872, in Pontecurone (Alessandria) to a family of modest economic means. He began attending Don Bosco’s oratory in Valdocco, where he learned love for young people and concern for their future. In Turin, he was deeply moved by the charitable work founded by Saint Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo.
At the age of 20, not yet a priest, he opened a boarding school for poor boys in Tortona. When, in 1908, Messina and Reggio Calabria were struck by a devastating earthquake, he was among the first responders. At the request of Pope Pius X, he was appointed Vicar General of the Diocese of Messina. Likewise, he devoted himself to helping victims of the 1915 Marsica earthquake, saving children who had been left orphaned.
Clerics and priests joined him and together they formed the Little Work of Divine Providence. In 1899, he founded the branch of the Hermits of Divine Providence. On March 21, 1903, the Bishop of Tortona approved the male religious congregation of the Little Work of Divine Providence, the Sons of Divine Providence (priests, coadjutor brothers and hermits). Members take a fourth vow of special fidelity to the Pope. At the suggestion of Pope Leo XIII, among the Congregation’s goals in the 1904 Constitutions, he added the commitment to foster unity among separated Churches.
He was a sought-after preacher, confessor, and promoter of evangelization among the masses through pilgrimages, missions, processions, and living Nativity scenes. Greatly devoted to the Virgin Mary, with the manual labor of his clerics he built the Shrines of Our Lady of the Guard in Tortona (1931) and of Our Lady of Caravaggio in Fumo (1938).
He carried out two missionary journeys, in 1921–1922 and 1934–1937, to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, where he founded schools for poor boys, charitable works for people with physical and mental disabilities, and orphanages. Suffering from heart disease, he died in Sanremo on the evening of March 12, 1940. Multitudes paid their respects when lying in state and crowded his funeral in Tortona. Don Orione was canonized on May 16, 2004, by Pope John Paul II.