Saint Giovanni Calabria

He was born in Verona on October 8, 1873, the seventh and last child of Luigi, a cobbler, and Angela Foschio, who worked as a maid in well-to-do households. ¹⁴ The Holy See's biography says she was a woman of great faith, educated as a girl in the institute Father Nicola Mazza ran for poor children. ¹ "Poverty was his mistress right from his birth," it says. ¹

When his father died the boy had to leave school in his fourth year of elementary classes and find work. ¹⁷ Father Pietro Scapini, rector of the church of San Lorenzo, noticed him, prepared him privately for the entrance examination to the seminary's lyceum, and he passed. ¹⁷ His studies were interrupted again by two years of military service, which Famiglia Cristiana says he spent at the military hospital in the city. ¹⁷ The Holy See says he took on the most humiliating tasks there and helped many of his fellow soldiers back to the practice of the faith. ¹

One cold night in November 1897, in his first year of theology, he was coming home from visiting the sick in the hospital when he found a boy crouched on his doorstep, a runaway, both the Holy See and Famiglia Cristiana say, from the gypsies. ¹⁷ He picked him up, took him in and shared his own room with him. ¹ The Holy See calls it the beginning of his work for orphaned and abandoned boys. ¹

A few months later, in 1898 by Famiglia Cristiana's dating, he founded a pious union to care for the sick poor. ¹⁴⁷ He was ordained a priest on August 11, 1901, and sent as curate to the parish of Santo Stefano in Verona, where he was also confessor at the seminary. ¹⁴⁷ He gave much of his time to hearing confessions, and Famiglia Cristiana says he favored above all the city's chimney sweeps and abandoned boys. ¹⁷

In 1907 he was made rector of San Benedetto al Monte. ¹⁴ On November 26 of that year he took seven poor and abandoned children into a small house in Vicolo Case Rotte, and his congregation counts that day as the official beginning of its work. ⁴⁵ He called the boys the "Buoni Fanciulli," the good children, and the house the Casa Buoni Fanciulli. ¹⁵ On November 6, 1908, with the help of Count Francesco Perez, he moved them to San Zeno in Monte, which became the mother house. ¹⁴

Laymen came wanting to share his life and his poverty, and from them grew the Congregation of the Poor Servants of Divine Providence, which Famiglia Cristiana dates to 1909. ¹⁷ The bishop of Verona approved it on February 11, 1932, but, the diocesan archive notes, with limits on the original plan, which had put priests and brothers on an equal footing; a long struggle followed until the decree of praise in 1949, the Holy See giving the date of pontifical approval as April 25 of that year. ¹⁴ A women's branch begun in 1910 became the Poor Women Servants of Divine Providence, a congregation of diocesan right from March 25, 1952, and of pontifical right from December 25, 1981. ¹⁴

He gave both the same mission. John Paul II quoted it from a letter of 1933: he felt called to "show the world that divine Providence exists, that God is not a stranger but a Father who thinks of us, provided that we think of him and do our part, which is to seek first God's holy kingdom and his righteousness." ³ His houses took in boys in need free of charge, and he founded hospitals and homes for the sick and the old. ¹ He wanted his priests to work in poor places, where, as the Holy See's biography puts it, nothing was humanly promising, and he sent four of his brothers as far as Vijayawada in India. ¹

From about 1939, the Holy See says, and against his own wish to go unnoticed, he began to speak to the wider Church, insisting that the world could be saved only by returning to Christ and his Gospel. ¹ Famiglia Cristiana says he edited a series of books called "Ore decisive," decisive hours, and wrote in a number of Italian journals, anticipating ideas the Second Vatican Council would take up. ⁴⁷ In 1944 he founded the Family of External Brothers, laymen who live the spirit of the Poor Servants in their own surroundings. ¹⁴⁷

He wrote an enormous number of letters. ⁴⁶ He kept in touch with Protestants, Orthodox and Jews for the sake of Christian unity, and the Holy See says he "wrote, spoke and loved but he never entered into discussions." ¹ A Lutheran pastor, Sune Wiman, who had corresponded with him, wrote to Paul VI in 1964 to ask that his friend be glorified. ¹ His congregation adds that he also wrote to C. S. Lewis, the Oxford professor and author of the Narnia books, and that because he knew no English he wrote in Latin. ⁶

During the war a Jewish woman doctor hid from the Nazi-Fascist persecution in one of his houses, dressed as a sister. ¹³ She later wrote to Paul VI that every instant of his life had been "a personification of St. Paul's marvellous canticle on charity." ¹

On December 3, 1954, the Holy See's biography says, he offered his life to God for Pope Pius XII, who was then dying. ¹ He died the next day, December 4. ¹⁴⁷ The biography adds that the pope unexpectedly recovered and lived four more years. ¹ Famiglia Cristiana, which gives the cause of death as a cerebral hemiplegia after long illness, does not mention the offering. ⁷

Pius XII, who did not know of it, sent the congregation a telegram calling him "campione di evangelica carità," a champion of Gospel charity. ¹ His funeral three days later, his congregation recalls, brought an enormous crowd into the streets of Verona behind the coffin. ⁵ Blessed Cardinal Schuster compared him to the Servant of the Lord, and the Holy See gives as the words the cardinal had engraved on his tomb: "He shone like a lighthouse in the Church of God." ¹

John Paul II beatified him in Verona on April 17, 1988, and canonized him in Rome on April 18, 1999, together with Marcellin Champagnat and Agostina Livia Pietrantoni. ¹²⁵ At the canonization the pope called him "an exemplary witness to the Resurrection." ²

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Giovanni Calabria, so none is given here. ¹⁴⁷ His own congregation describes his work as given first of all to orphans, the abandoned, the marginalized, the sick and the old. ⁵

His memorial is kept on October 8, his birthday. ⁴⁵ The historical archive of the Diocese of Verona explains why: he died on December 4, in Advent, and the obligatory memorial was placed on the day of his birth to keep it out of that season. ⁴ His congregation celebrates his liturgical feast on October 8 every year. ⁵ Famiglia Cristiana, the Italian Catholic weekly, lists him as saint of the day on December 4, the anniversary of his death. ⁷

John Paul II said that he loved to repeat to his co-workers the words of the Gospel, "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well." ² The Verona archive describes everything he founded as resting on that line, trusting the Lord and his Providence for all the rest. ⁴

It began with one boy on a doorstep, taken into a theology student's room on a cold night. ¹ Nothing about it was planned, and the houses, the congregations and the hospitals came afterward.

He wanted his priests where nothing looked humanly promising, and his houses were for boys nobody else would take. ¹ To one young student who had written to him, a boy who would later become the third head of the work, he wrote twice in his own hand, his congregation says, words that translate as "Make yourself a saint, make yourself a saint, dear Bistaffa." ⁶

At the end he offered his own life for a dying pope. ¹ The Holy See tells what followed as a recovery, and leaves it there without explaining it.