Saint Joseph Benedict Cottolengo

He was born at Bra, a small town in the province of Cuneo in Piedmont, on May 3, 1786, the eldest of twelve children, six of whom died in infancy. ¹ Benedict XVI says he showed great sensitivity to the poor from childhood, and that two of his brothers followed him into the priesthood. ¹

His youth fell in the Napoleonic years, a time of religious and social hardship. ¹ He became, in Benedict's words, "a good priest much sought after by penitents," and in Turin a successful preacher of retreats and conferences for university students. ¹

At thirty-two he was appointed a canon of the Santissima Trinità, a body of priests who served the Corpus Domini church and saw to the dignity of the city's religious ceremonies. ¹ Benedict XVI says he felt uneasy there, and that God was preparing him for something else. ¹

On the morning of Sunday, September 2, 1827, the coach from Milan came into Turin more crowded than usual. ¹ On it was a French family: a mother with five children, far along in pregnancy and running a high fever. ¹ They went from hospital to hospital, found a bed in a public dormitory, and when the woman's condition became serious someone went to look for a priest. ¹ They found Cottolengo, and he stayed with her until she died, with her family around her. ¹

Afterward he went to the Blessed Sacrament and knelt down. Benedict XVI gives his prayer: "My God, why? Why did you want me to be a witness? What do you want of me? Something must be done!" ¹ Then he got up, had the bells rung and the candles lit, and told the people who gathered out of curiosity: "The grace has been granted! The grace has been granted!" ¹

From then on, Benedict says, he was a changed man, and he turned all his abilities, especially his gift for money and organization, to the people in greatest need. ¹

The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia dates the Piccola Casa della Divina Provvidenza to 1827 and describes it as founded "for every kind of human misery." ⁴ Benedict XVI, speaking at the house in 2010, said the beginning was hard: there were many charitable works in Turin already, but they could not cope with the city's poverty, and Cottolengo set out to take in the people others would not receive. ² That first house did not last long, the pope said, and in 1832 a new one opened in the Valdocco district. ²

He gave the buildings names: "House of Faith," "House of Hope," "House of Charity." ¹ Benedict XVI calls what he built "a sort of village," run as a family, with volunteers, religious and lay people sharing the work. ¹ Everyone had a job, whether work, prayer, service, teaching or administration, and "the healthy and the sick shared the same daily burden." ¹

From the work came three religious families, which Benedict XVI greeted at the house in 2010. ² Cottolengo also founded five monasteries of contemplative sisters and one of hermits beside the houses of charity, and counted them among his most important achievements, the "heart" that was to beat for the whole work. ¹ The encyclopedia's article on hermits places that congregation in Lombardy. ⁵

He did not work from a fixed plan. ⁶ Benedict XVI quotes him: "I am a good for nothing and I don't even know what to make of myself. But Divine Providence certainly knows what it wants. It is only up to me to support it. Let us go ahead in Domino." ¹ To the poor he called himself "the labourer of Divine Providence." ¹

John Paul II, visiting in 1980, said the motto Cottolengo chose for the work was Saint Paul's "Caritas Christi urget nos," the love of Christ urges us on, and that he made no fixed plans but answered what each day put in front of him. ⁶ John Paul II also noted that popular speech had come to call the place the citadel of the miracle. ⁶

Benedict XVI, at the house in 2010, described how Cottolengo understood the poor: that they are not an image of Jesus but Jesus himself, to be served as such, and that the ones most repellent to the eye were the most precious of all. ² He saw that people struck by suffering and rejection tend to shut themselves away, Benedict said, and so he built a family-style life around them to draw them back. ²

He died on April 30, 1842. ¹ A Vatican News report of 2020 says he died in an epidemic of typhus, the same disease that afflicted the people he had given his life to. ³ Benedict XVI gives his last words: "Misericordia, Domine; Misericordia, Domine. Good and Holy Providence... Blessed Virgin, it is now up to you." ¹ A newspaper of the time, Benedict says, summed up his whole life as "an intense day of love." ¹

In 1916 the Congregation of Rites approved two miracles worked through his intercession, and Benedict XV spoke at the reading of the decree. ⁷ The Little House is still at work. In 2010 Benedict XVI went there during a pastoral visit to Turin to venerate his remains and to meet the residents. ¹²

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Joseph Benedict Cottolengo, and none is claimed here. ¹² He is remembered as the founder of the Little House of Divine Providence in Turin, which still carries his name. ¹³

Saint Joseph Benedict Cottolengo's feast is April 30, the day he died. ¹ Vatican News, reporting from Turin in 2020, called April 30 his liturgical memorial. ³

His work began with a prayer that was close to a complaint. He had just watched a mother die in a public dormitory after her family had gone from hospital to hospital, and he asked God why he had been made to see it, and then said that something must be done. ¹ Benedict XVI tells the story without smoothing it over, and he does not explain the woman's death. ¹

Benedict XVI credits him with real gifts for money and organization, and he called himself a good-for-nothing. ¹ At the house in Turin the pope spoke of his serene trust through dramatic moments in his life, and of his habit of reading the events of each day for signs of God's fatherhood. ¹²

The Little House was not a place where the well cared for the sick from a distance. Everyone had a task, and the healthy and the sick carried the same daily load. ¹ John Paul II located the secret of it in Cottolengo's own poverty: a man who had let go of everything could stop counting what he had when someone needed help. ⁶

Benedict XVI, speaking to the residents in 2010, told them they were not outsiders to the world's destiny but precious pieces of a mosaic God was still making, and that in a house like theirs suffering, evil and death did not have the last word. ²