ST LUIGI ORIONE, PRIEST AND FOUNDER

ST LUIGI ORIONE, PRIEST AND FOUNDER - 12 MARCH

SAINT LUIGI ORIONE, PRIEST AND FOUNDER

Saint Luigi Orione was born in Pontecurone, diocese of Tortona, on June 23, 1872. He joined the diocesan seminary of Tortona. As a young seminarian he devoted himself to the care of others by becoming a member of both the San Marziano Society for Mutual Help and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul.

THE FIRST ORATORY

On July 3, 1892 he opened the first Oratory in Tortona to provide for the Christian training of boys. The following year, on October 15, 1893, Luigi Orione, then a seminarian of twenty-one, started a boarding school for poor boys.

HE WAS ORDAINED A PRIEST

On April 13, 1895, Luigi Orione was ordained priest and, on that occasion, the Bishop gave the clerical habit to six pupils of the boarding school. Within a brief span of time, Don Orione opened new houses at Mornico Losana (Pavia), Noto - in Sicily, Sanremo and Rome.

THE HERMITS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE

Around the young Founder there grew up seminarians and priests who made up the first core group of the Little Work of Divine Providence. In 1899, he founded the branch of the Hermits of Divine Providence. The Bishop of Tortona, Mgr Igino Bandi, by a Decree of March 21, 1903, issued the canonical approval of the Sons of Divine Providence (priests, lay brothers and hermits) - the male congregation of the Little Work of Divine Providence. It aims to "co-operate to bring the little ones, the poor and the people to the Church and to the Pope, by means of the works of charity", and professes a fourth vow of special "faithfulness to the Pope". In the first Constitutions of 1904, among the aims of the new Congregation, there appears that of working to "achieve the union of the separated Churches".

HE WAS ACTIVELY INTERESTED IN THE NEW PROBLEMS OF HIS TIME

Inspired by a profound love for the Church and for the salvation of souls, he was actively interested in the new problems of his time, such as the freedom and unity of the Church, the Roman question, modernism, socialism and the Christian evangelisation of industrial workers. On June 29, 1915, twenty years after the foundation of the Sons of Divine Providence, he added to the "single tree of many branches" the Congregation of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity who are inspired by the same founding charism. Alongside them, he placed the Blind Sisters, Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament. Later, the Contemplative Sisters of Jesus Crucified were also founded.

For lay people he set up the associations of the "Ladies of Divine Providence", the "Former Pupils", and the "Friends". More recently, the Don Orione Secular Institute and the Don Orione Lay People's Movement have come into being.

HIS LOVE FOR OUR LADY

He was a preacher, a confessor and a tireless organiser of pilgrimages, missions, processions, live cribs and other popular manifestations and celebrations of the faith. He loved Our Lady deeply and fostered devotion to her by every means possible and, through the manual labour of his seminarians, built the shrines of Our Lady of Safe Keeping in Tortona and Our Lady of Caravaggio at Fumo.

HIS HOLY DEATH

In the winter of 1940, with the intention of easing the heart and lung complaints that were troubling him, he went to the Sanremo house, even though, as he said, "it is not among the palm trees that I would like to die, but among the poor who are Jesus Christ". Only three days later, on March 12, 1940, surrounded by the love of his confreres, Don Orione died, while sighing "Jesus, Jesus! I am going".

His body was found to be intact at its first exhumation in 1965. It has been exposed to the veneration of the faithful in the shrine of Our Lady of Safe Keeping in Tortona ever since October 26, 1980.

From a homily of Pope John Paul II from the Vatican website: https://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20040516_orione_en.html

PRAYER:

Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that the venerable feast of Saint Luigi may increase our devotion and promote our salvation. 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. Amen.

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