Cottolengo's life is simple and extraordinary.
His Little House of Divine Providence
it is totally entrusted to the heavenly Father.
But also to the patriarch Saint Joseph
by Corrado Vari
Ffounder of works for the sick and needy that no one else cared about, but also of religious families and "contemplative" monasteries, at the material and spiritual service of those same works. A complex and impressive reality, which already assisted over 1300 people at his death.
Built without planning anything, but looking for signs of what needed to be done in everyday events and meetings; without drawing up budgets, but spending every penny of what came from benefactors of all kinds, sometimes as mysterious as angels sent to support the work of a man who said of himself: «I am good for nothing and I don't even know what I have I do. However, divine Providence certainly knows what it wants. It's just up to me to go along with it." This was Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo, whose feast day falls on April 30th.
Born in Bra, in the Cuneo area, on 3 May 1786, he was the first of twelve children, two others of whom would also become priests. Even as a child he showed signs of what would be his vocation, which came true in the difficult years of the Napoleonic period: he was in fact ordained a priest in 1811 and in 1818 he became canon of the church of Corpus Domini in Turin.
However, Cottolengo discovered his definitive calling only at a mature age, at 41, thanks to an episode which was the response to a restlessness in his heart, despite having always been a good priest, first in the province and then in Turin (where they called him "the good canon"), attentive to the poor and fascinated by the figure of Saint Vincent de Paul.
This is the fact: on 2 September 1827 he was called to assist at the point of death a young woman, mother of three children, rejected by all hospitals because she was suffering from tuberculosis and pregnant. She gave birth to a baby girl, who unfortunately lived only a few hours, then she too died in front of the priest and her disconsolate husband. Shocked by the tragedy, after a night of intense prayer, Giuseppe had a clear path: to dedicate himself to the least, becoming a humble instrument of Providence and placing his trust only in this, since God «to whom he extraordinarily trusts, extraordinarily provides» (GB Cottolengo, Sayings and thoughts.
Shortly afterwards he began to welcome the first "scraps of humanity" in some rented rooms, involving the first of a long line of collaborators from all backgrounds and social classes, attracted by the energy, the initiative, but above all by the unshakable faith of a man who is notI stopped for just a moment. The fruit was a work that still today, in Italy and other countries, embodies St. Paul's phrase Caritas Christi urget nos (“The charity of Christ impels us”, 2 Cor 5, 14), became the motto of the Cottolenghini placed at the entrance of what would become the Little House of Divine Providence, a true "citadel of charity".
His only program: to follow and serve the initiative of Providence without worrying about the many difficulties and hardships, in the certainty that "families will be missing, men will be missing, but divine Providence will never be missing" (Sayings and thoughts, 135). He continued: «I have already told you many times that we move forward by dint of miracles; in here we see it every day, indeed, we could say, we are a continuous miracle: well, why distrust God? Why not abandon ourselves entirely to him?” (Sayings and thoughts.
There are many prodigious episodes remembered by those who were at his side and by those who narrated his life. Among the intercessors who obtained extraordinary interventions from Providence, Saint Joseph, his patron saint to whom he often turned, could not be missing. Like the time he asked him for help, not knowing how to pay off a large debt to a baker. To meet the deadline, he had borrowed the sum from a rich merchant, promising to repay it after a few days. «Blessed be Saint Joseph!», exclaimed Cottolengo upon receiving it. Shortly afterwards, when he went to the baker to deliver it, he was told that a man had recently passed by who had paid for everything in the name of Canon Cottolengo. «But I didn't send anyone – he said to the baker – Saint Joseph certainly sent him». And it wasn't over yet: when he went to the merchant to return the money, he refused it and said that he intended to donate it to the Little House. The prayer to Saint Joseph had been answered beyond all expectations, extraordinarily.
Fourteen years after the beginning of his adventure of charity, he fell ill with typhus, felt that the Lord was about to call him to himself and retired to Chieri with his priest brother Don Luigi, to spend the last days of his life there and died there on 30 April 1842. A few months later, on 19 December, Saint Luigi Guanella was born, who found his model in Cottolengo, as well as in Saint Giovanni Bosco, who had built his oratory a short distance from the Piccola Casa in Turin.
Beatified by Benedict Others called him a "hero of charity", a "prodigious man", but he only defined himself as a "labourer of Providence" (Sayings and thoughts, 84), reminding everyone - in the face of a complex of works and institutions in which immense and precious work was and still is carried out - that "prayer is the first and most important work of the Little House" (Sayings and thoughts, 24), because every good comes only from the Lord, to whom we must never stop trusting and asking for everything.
NB Ne The Holy Crusade, 3 (March) 2024 the name "Riccardo" was incorrectly attributed to Corrado Vari. We apologize.