Philipp Rinaldi

Filippo Rinaldi was born on 28 May 1856 in Lu, in the Monferrato hills of Piedmont, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. He came from a farming family of modest means and was the eighth of nine children. In boyhood he encountered Saint John Bosco, who was gathering poor and working-class youths for his oratories and schools. Don Bosco invited him to Turin, but family need of labor on the farm delayed his departure. He later entered Salesian formation, made religious profession in the Society of St. Francis de Sales in 1877, and was ordained a priest in 1882.

After ordination he served in Salesian houses in Italy before being sent to Spain. There he directed the Salesian community at Sarrià near Barcelona and later served as provincial superior of the Salesians in Spain, consolidating Don Bosco’s educational and pastoral method on the Iberian peninsula. In 1901 he was recalled to the mother house in Turin and appointed Catechist General, the spiritual director of the congregation, a charge he held under Rector Majors Michael Rua and Paul Albera.

In Turin he promoted the Salesian Cooperators and the association of past pupils. In 1917 he founded the Volunteers of Don Bosco, women living the Salesian charism in ordinary secular life; the group later became a secular institute. After Albera’s death the General Chapter of 1922 elected Rinaldi Rector Major, the third successor of Don Bosco.

As Rector Major from 1922 until 1931 he guided a period of marked expansion of Salesian houses and missions while insisting on interior life, fidelity to the founder’s preventive system, and the unity of the Salesian Family. He died in Turin on 5 December 1931. Pope John Paul II beatified him on 29 April 1990. His liturgical memorial is 5 December. Blessed Filippo Rinaldi is remembered as a discreet continuer of Don Bosco’s work and as a principal promoter of lay Salesian vocations in the early twentieth century.