St. Leonardo Murialdo
Feast day: March 30
St. Leonardo Murialdo was an Italian priest who founded the Congregation of St. Joseph, also known as the Murialdines. Born in Turin in 1828 to a large Catholic family, St. Leonardo lost his father in his early childhood and was sent to a boarding school in Savona for seven years. At age 14, he went through a spiritual crisis that ended with a profound experience of God’s immense mercy in confession. Renewed in faith, Leonardo decided at the age of 17 to become a priest. This experience as a teenager, as well as the loss of his father at a young age, helped inspire his compassion for suffering youth and his many efforts to minister to working boys and street children.
Upon his ordination in 1851, Father Murialdo began collaborating with St. John Bosco, among others, working at the Guardian Angel’s Oratory and later becoming director of the Oratory of St. Aloysius at Port Nuova. He also made numerous trips to educational and welfare institutions in Italy, France and England to learn more about educating the young. He was one of the promoters of the first Catholic Popular Libraries and of the Union of Catholic Workers, of which he would be an ecclesiastical assistant for many years.
After studying theology further in Paris, he returned to Turin and directed the Artigianelli Boarding School, where he took in boys, educated them as Christians and taught them a trade during a time of strong social differences and industrialization. He supported lay associations as a means of vocational training for young people and had a significant presence in the Catholic press. With the support of others, he founded the Congregation of St. Joseph, whose apostolic goal is the education of youth, especially the poor and abandoned.
With a genuine love of the poor and trust in God’s providence, Father Murialdo opened oratories, vocational schools, family houses for working children, and agricultural schools. He was known for his kindness and gentleness toward the young people he served. His motto was “Poor and abandoned: these are the two essential requisites for a young person to be one of ours; and the more poor and abandoned he is, the more he is one of ours.”
Father Murialdo always looked after the spiritual well-being of the youth he helped, caring not only for their health and physical needs, but also their religious growth. He once wrote about his program, “Our plan is not only to make our young people intelligent and hardworking workers, even less so to make them proud little know-it-alls, but in the first instance it is to make them sincerely and openly Christian.” Thus, he developed catechesis for his young people and encouraged them to receive the sacraments and be evangelizers among their peers.
Father Murialdo had a strong love of the Eucharist, and his spirituality was based on the word of God and the writings of classic spiritual directors, such as St. Francis de Sales, from whom he learned the mercy of God. Pope Benedict XVI highlighted this dependence on God’s mercy when he spoke about St. Leonardo Murialdo in a general audience in 2010, the Year for Priests. “I would like to emphasize that the heart of Murialdo’s spirituality was his conviction of the merciful love of God, a Father ever good, patient and generous, who reveals the grandeur and immensity of his mercy with forgiveness,” Pope Benedict said. “St. Leonardo did not experience this reality at an intellectual level but rather in his life, through his vivid encounter with the Lord. He always considered himself a man whom God in his mercy had pardoned.”
Benedict continued: “Remembering the crisis he had been through in his youth, he noted: ‘The good Lord wanted to make his kindness and generosity shine out in a completely special way. Not only did he readmit me to his friendship, but he called me to make a decision of predilection: he called me to the priesthood, even only a few months after I had returned to him.’ Thus St. Leonardo lived his priestly vocation as a gift of God’s mercy, freely given, with a sense of gratitude, joy and love.”
In 1885, Father Murialdo suffered terribly from bronchitis for six weeks. He died of pneumonia March 30, 1900. He was beatified by Pope Paul VI in 1963 and canonized by him in 1970.
Reflection
Dear God, help me to see that you can accomplish so much through your goodness that you teach me in adversity. May I rejoice in seeing the bounty of your merciful love shared through me with those in similar circumstances.
Prayer
O God, light of the faithful and shepherd of souls,
who set blessed Leonardo in the Church
to feed your sheep by his words and form them by his example,
grant that through his intercession
we may keep the faith he taught by his words
and follow the way he showed by his example.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
