Q3972798

Stefano Bellesini was born on 25 November 1774 in Trento, the historic capital of the Prince-Bishopric of Trent in the Alps. The city, now in northern Italy, was then an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire. He grew up in a Catholic environment and, while still young, sought admission to the Order of Saint Augustine. He entered the Augustinian community, completed his novitiate, made religious profession, and was ordained a priest toward the end of the eighteenth century. His early years in the order coincided with the upheavals of the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic domination of much of Italy and the Tyrol, which brought the suppression of many religious houses.

When the Augustinian convents of the Trentino were closed by the Napoleonic government around 1810, Bellesini was forced to abandon conventual life. He did not, however, abandon his priestly and educational vocation. Settling in his native region, he devoted himself to the instruction of children, particularly those of poor families, and organized a free school. His reputation as a teacher and his concern for the moral and religious formation of youth led the civil authorities of the restored Austrian regime to involve him in the supervision of local schools. Throughout these years of secular employment he continued to exercise his ministry as a priest and longed for the restoration of regular religious observance.

After the fall of Napoleon and the reorganization of the Church in the Italian states, Bellesini was able to return to the Augustinian Order. His superiors, recognizing his experience and virtue, appointed him master of novices, a post he held in Rome and in other houses of the order. In this role he formed a new generation of Augustinians in the spirit of Saint Augustine and in fidelity to the constitutions. In 1831 he received a new assignment as prior of the community and pastor of the shrine of Santa Maria del Buon Consiglio (Our Lady of Good Counsel) at Genazzano, a town in the hills southeast of Rome long served by the Augustinians. At Genazzano he combined administrative duties with an intense pastoral life, preaching, hearing confessions, teaching catechism, and assisting pilgrims who came to the famous Marian image.

In the early weeks of 1840 an epidemic of typhus spread through Genazzano. Bellesini immediately gave himself to the care of the afflicted, going from house to house to bring the sacraments and material help. Exhausted by his labors, he contracted the disease and died on 2 February 1840. He was sixty-five years old. Popular veneration began almost at once, and the Augustinians promoted his cause. After the usual processes, Pope Pius X beatified him on 27 December 1904. Blessed Stefano Bellesini is commemorated liturgically on 3 February. He is remembered as a model of the Augustinian pastor, educator of the young, and servant of the sick, whose life was spent between the cloister, the school, and the parish.