Luigi Guanella

Luigi Guanella was born on 19 December 1842 in Fraciscio, a hamlet of Campodolcino in the Alpine Valchiavenna of the province of Sondrio in Lombardy. He was the ninth of thirteen children of Lorenzo Guanella and Maria Bianchi, a devout rural family. Formed in a mountain parish culture of hard work and popular piety, he entered the seminary of the Diocese of Como and was ordained a priest in 1866. His first pastoral charges were isolated Alpine parishes, including Prosto and Savogno, where he already joined catechesis and elementary schooling with care for the sick and the poor. In the mid-1870s he spent several years in Turin with Saint John Bosco, absorbing Salesian methods of education and charity, until his own bishop recalled him to diocesan service.

From 1881 Guanella took over a house for orphaned and needy girls at Pianello del Lario on Lake Como. That community became the nucleus of the Daughters of Saint Mary of Providence, a congregation of sisters devoted to girls, the elderly, and people with physical or intellectual disabilities. In 1886 he moved the expanding work to Como and established the House of Divine Providence as a centre for orphans, the aged, and those who were abandoned or disabled. Over the following decades he opened further houses in northern Italy. To give the same charism a male branch he founded the Servants of Charity (Guanellians), a congregation of priests and brothers, which received diocesan approval in the first decade of the twentieth century. His spirituality joined trust in Divine Providence and devotion to the Sacred Heart and to Saint Joseph with a practical charity that refused to separate material relief from Christian formation.

Guanella was an energetic organizer, preacher, and popular spiritual writer. He promoted the Pious Union of Saint Joseph for the dying, which received encouragement from Pope Pius X. In 1912 he travelled to the United States to begin a foundation among Italian immigrants in Chicago. His institutes grew despite financial strain, local opposition, and the slow process of obtaining stable ecclesiastical recognition for new congregations. In 1915 his health collapsed, and he died in Como on 24 October of that year, during the First World War.

A reputation for holiness, supported by witnesses to his pastoral zeal and by the spread of his congregations, led to a cause for canonization. Pope Paul VI beatified him on 25 October 1964. Pope Benedict XVI canonized him on 23 October 2011, presenting him as a witness of charity toward the weakest. His liturgical memorial is 24 October. The Servants of Charity and the Daughters of Saint Mary of Providence continue his work in many countries, especially among people with disabilities, the elderly, and the poor. His tomb is venerated at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Como.