Saint Gaetano Catanoso

He was born on February 14, 1879, at Chorio di San Lorenzo, in the Archdiocese of Reggio Calabria, and the Holy See's Italian biography says he was baptized the same day. ¹² The two Holy See texts describe his parents differently. The English calls them "wealthy landowners and exemplary Christians"; the Italian, which names them as Antonio Catanoso and Antonina Tripodi, calls them deeply Christian farmers. ¹² Catholic World Report also speaks of a prosperous family. ⁷

He felt called to the priesthood at about ten and entered the archdiocesan seminary, and Catholic World Report says ill health sent him home several times. ²⁷ He was ordained on September 20, 1902. ¹² The Italian biography says he promised that day never to commit a deliberate sin and to live every moment in the presence of God. ²

In 1904 he was sent to Pentidattilo, as the Holy See spells it, or Pentedattilo, as the archdiocese does, a village clinging to a rock in the Aspromonte mountains. ¹²⁶ The archdiocese describes what he found there: peasants marked by illiteracy, by emigration to America, and by a blasphemy that had become almost the ordinary way of speaking. ⁶ He was not even its full parish priest at first, but its "dittereo", a curate of a dependent parish, a title left over from the old Greek-rite organization of the area. ⁶ Catholic World Report says he traveled by mule or on foot over the mountains to reach Catholics scattered across the district. ⁷

For the young people who could not go to the public schools he opened a free night school and taught it himself. ²⁶ The Italian biography says the people began, without being asked, to call him "padre", father, a name that never left him. ² John Paul II used the same memory at the beatification: "they loved to call him 'father' and this they really felt he was, since he was an eloquent sign of the fatherhood of God". ⁴

How long he stayed depends on the source. The Holy See gives 1904 to 1921; the archdiocese says nearly twenty years, Catholic World Report seventeen. ¹⁶⁷ The English biography says he desired nothing more than to serve that country parish, and that his move to the city did not make him "puffed up". ¹

At Pentidattilo, the Italian biography says, he caught fire with devotion to the suffering face of the Lord, and set out to make reparation, above all for blasphemy and for the profanation of feast days. ² He started a Holy Face bulletin. ¹² The sources date the association he founded differently: the English biography speaks of a "Confraternity of the Holy Face" in 1920, while the Italian says he joined the Archconfraternity of Tours as a "Missionary of the Holy Face" in 1918 and set up a pious union of the Holy Face at Pentidattilo the following year. ¹² The archdiocese also dates his enrollment at Tours to 1918. ⁶

He joined the devotion to the Eucharist. Benedict XVI quoted him at the canonization: "If we wish to adore the real Face of Jesus..., we can find it in the divine Eucharist, where with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Face of Our Lord is hidden under the white veil of the Host". ³ John Paul II said he "fostered and spread a great devotion to the bloodstained and disfigured face of Christ, which he saw reflected in the face of every suffering person". ⁴

He wanted, John Paul II said, to be "the Cyrenaean who helped Christ carry the Cross, heavy more for sin than for the weight of its wood". ⁴ The Italian biography records that in 1929 he offered himself as a victim to the Heart of Jesus. ²

On February 2, 1921, he was moved to a large parish in Reggio Calabria, which the English biography calls Santa Maria de la Candelaria and the Italian Santa Maria della Purificazione, known as the Candelora; he stayed until 1940. ¹² There he revived Eucharistic and Marian devotion, taught the catechism and campaigned against blasphemy. ¹ He organized what he called "flying squads", teams of priests who went out to help in parishes by preaching and hearing confessions. ¹⁷

The other appointments piled up. He was confessor to the city's religious houses and to the prison from 1921 to 1950, a hospital chaplain, and spiritual director of the archdiocesan seminary; from 1940 until his death he was the cathedral's canon penitentiary. ¹²⁶ He started a work to pay for the training of poor seminarians, and the archdiocese says he worked with Luigi Orione, who had come to Calabria to care for the orphans of the 1908 earthquake, and became his close friend. ²⁶ In the Holy See's English, he saw the face of Christ in all who suffered, and said: "Let us all work to defend and save the orphans, those who are abandoned. There are too many dangers and there is too much misery." ¹ Catholic World Report says he opened an orphanage during the Second World War. ⁷

In 1934 he founded the Daughters of Saint Veronica, Missionaries of the Holy Face, with the first convent at Riparo, in Reggio Calabria. ¹ Their work was prayer of reparation, humble service in church, catechesis, and the care of children, young people, priests and the elderly. ¹ The Italian biography says Luigi Orione encouraged the foundation. ²

The congregation was not approved at once, and the sources date its approval differently. The English biography says the Archbishop for a time curtailed its activities, which Catanoso accepted with great docility, and that the Constitutions he had written received diocesan approval on March 25, 1958. ¹ The archdiocese gives the same date for canonical recognition and says he waited for it "in obedience and without losing hope". ⁶ The Italian biography instead says the sisters were canonically approved by Archbishop Giovanni Ferro in 1953 and afterward by the Holy See. ² Benedict XVI said he handed on to them "the spirit of charity, humility and sacrifice which enlivened his entire life". ³

In old age he went blind, and bore it patiently, the Italian biography says, as he bore his illnesses. ² He died on April 4, 1963, at the congregation's Mother House in Reggio. ¹² He had planned a church of the Holy Face and did not live to see it; the archdiocese says it was consecrated nine years after his death. ²⁶

John Paul II beatified him in Rome on May 4, 1997. ¹⁴ Benedict XVI canonized him on October 23, 2005, together with Józef Bilczewski, Zygmunt Gorazdowski, Alberto Hurtado and Felix of Nicosia, and called him "a lover and apostle of the Holy Face of Jesus". ³ The archdiocese remembers him as the first priest of its diocesan clergy to be canonized. ⁶

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Gaetano Catanoso, so none is given here. ¹²⁷ The Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, remembers him as the priest who founded the Veronica Sisters of the Holy Face to care for the poor and the marginalized. ⁵

Saint Gaetano Catanoso's feast is April 4, the day of his death. ⁵⁷ The Italian bishops' conference lists him on April 4 in its saint of the day, drawn from the Roman Martyrology, and Catholic World Report says he died "on April 4th, his feast day". ⁵⁷

He was posted to a village most people were leaving, where, by the archdiocese's account, blasphemy had become ordinary speech. ⁶ He stayed for years, taught the young at night, and was called father by people who had not been asked to. ²⁶

His devotion to the Holy Face could have stayed a matter of pictures. He tied it to the Mass instead, and to the faces of the people in front of him: the orphan, the prisoner whose confession he heard for nearly thirty years, the isolated priest. ¹³⁴

When his superior restricted the congregation he had founded, he obeyed, and the approval came years later. ¹⁶ At the end he could no longer see. ² The Italian biography says that in his last illness he would cry out with joy at how beautiful the Lord was. ²