Saint Joseph Cafasso dedicated himself with extraordinary virtue to an ordinary apostolate. Trainer of priests, consoler of the sick, "priest of the gallows" because he assisted those condemned to death
by Corrado Vari
IOn 23 June the Church celebrates the memory of Saint Giuseppe Cafasso (1811-1860). Once again we are talking about a Piedmontese priest, belonging to the extraordinary flowering of sanctity that marked the XNUMXth century in that region.
«Model and teacher of the clergy, father of the poor, counselor of the doubtful, consoler of the sick, comfort of the dying, relief of prisoners, health of those condemned to the gallows». With these words Don Bosco described his great friend Don Cafasso: they were placed on an inscription that he had displayed after the death of the man who had been his spiritual director for twenty-five years, as well as the inspirer and benefactor of the works he founded. It has rightly been written that without Cafasso we would not have had Don Bosco and probably not even the Salesian Congregation.
Giuseppe Cafasso was born on 15 January 1811 in Castelnuovo d'Asti (today Castelnuovo Don Bosco), four years before the founder of the Salesians, into a peasant family with a solid faith. His younger sister Marianna was the mother of Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, founder of the Consolata Missionaries and promoter of the cause of beatification of his priest uncle.
Since he was a child he felt called to consecrate himself to the Lord. After attending public schools, he completed the entire course of studies in Chieri that would lead him to priestly ordination in 1833. In 1834 he entered as a student in the ecclesiastical boarding school of San Francesco d'Assisi, founded in Turin by the theologian Luigi Guala (1775- 1848), who later called him to be first assistant and then professor of moral theology. Upon Guala's death he also became rector of the boarding school and remained there for his entire life.
As the Bibliotheca Sanctorum (VI, col. 1318), he «had no specific programs of spirituality and apostolate, other than those common to the diocesan clergy; he left no institutions or founded congregations; he did not write school treatises or ascetic works, but lived the ordinary rhythm of the priestly mission in an extraordinary way."
Small in stature, frail and with a curved back: even the contrast between the physical appearance and the work of Don Cafasso seems designed to show that he was a humble instrument in the hands of God, and nothing more. «It is not necessary – he wrote – for the priest to do great and sensational works in his state to be a true and holy evangelical minister: great works are few, and few are called to do them, and it is sometimes a great and disastrous illusion to want tend towards great things and in the meantime we neglect the common, the ordinary. [...] Works therefore of zeal, of the glory of God and of the health of souls, but common, ordinary works; I say common not because they are such by their nature, since the smallest thing becomes the greatest when it is directed to that end, but I call them common to mean those that are available on a daily basis."
He then offered his entire life, extraordinary in the ordinary, consuming himself to train holy priests, to assist the poor and to console the suffering, living through fasting, penance and mortification. To those who observed how hard and tiring his days were, he replied: «Our rest will be in Heaven. O Paradise, whoever thinks of you will not suffer any tiredness!»; to those who told him that the door to Paradise is narrow, he replied: "Well, we will pass through one at a time." At every moment he was animated by the desire for Paradise, for himself and for all those he met, particularly in confession, at the bedside of the sick and in the inhumane prisons of Turin, where he went almost every day to spiritually and materially comfort the inmates.
It is nice to focus precisely on this aspect of his mission, which brings him closer to Saint Joseph, comfort of the suffering and dying. Cafasso was in fact an angel of divine mercy not only for those who are near the end of life due to illness or old age, but also and above all for those who are about to be put to death by the hand of human justice. “Priest of the gallows” was the best known of his nicknames: in fact there were dozens of people condemned to capital punishment who he accompanied to the gallows, obtaining their conversion and making each of them a new good thief. He called them "my hanged saints" and was often so certain of their salvation that he recommended them to ask the Madonna to prepare a place for him when they reached Heaven.
Don Bosco also said: «If Heaven came to tell us about the public life of Don Cafasso, there would be, I believe, thousands, thousands of souls who would say aloud: If we are saved, if we enjoy the glory of heaven, we are indebted to the charity, zeal and efforts of Don Cafasso. He saved us from dangers, he guided us on the path of virtue; he took us from the brink of Hell, he sent us to Paradise."
After having followed in the footsteps of Saint Paul to the end, becoming "everything to everyone, to save someone at any cost" (1 Cor 9, 22), he flew to heaven on June 23, 1860, less than fifty years old. He did not lack divine comfort at the point of death, he who had been a humble instrument for so many. As one of the witnesses of his last days said, «Don Cafasso is in direct communication with God, he holds familiar conversations with the Mother of the Savior, with her guardian angel and with Saint Joseph».
He was beatified in 1925 by Pope Pius