Aloisius Variara

Luigi Variara, also known by the Latin form Aloisius Variara, was born on 15 January 1875 in Viarigi, in the province of Asti in Piedmont, northern Italy, the son of Pietro Variara and Livia Bussa. His father had known Saint John Bosco, and that family tie helped turn the boy toward a Salesian vocation. In 1887 he entered the Salesian oratory at Valdocco in Turin, where he met Don Bosco in the last months of the founder’s life; Don Bosco died in January 1888. Variara then entered the Salesian novitiate and made religious profession in the Society of Saint Francis de Sales.

In 1894, still a cleric and not yet a priest, he was sent to the Salesian missions in Colombia and assigned to the leper colony of Agua de Dios in Cundinamarca, a settlement in which people with Hansen’s disease lived in isolation with their families. He was ordained a priest in 1898 and spent his ministry in pastoral care among the lepers: celebrating the sacraments, teaching, and organizing educational and recreational work in the spirit of Don Bosco. He gave special attention to the children of lepers, many of whom were themselves healthy but socially excluded.

On 7 May 1905 he founded the Daughters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary so that consecrated women might serve the lepers and so that daughters of lepers, who were commonly barred from other institutes, might be admitted to religious life. The foundation met with misunderstanding and opposition in some ecclesiastical and Salesian circles. Variara was transferred and at times separated from the work he had begun, while continuing to guide the new community as circumstances allowed.

His health declined in later years. He died on 1 February 1923 in Cúcuta, in northeastern Colombia, at the age of forty-eight. Pope John Paul II beatified him on 14 April 2002. His memory is kept especially among the Salesians and the congregation he founded.