He died at the age of 24, on July 4th 1925, killed in five days by a fulminating poliomyelitis. Passionate about mountains, Pier Giorgio engaged in his last scaling only a month before his death, noting on the photo of his undertaking: “Towards the top”. Almost as if it were a premonition of his imminent end or perhaps, more simply, adherence to Jesus’ invitation: “Duc in altum! (Lk 5:4). The son of a more than well-to-do bourgeois family – his father Alfredo founded the famous Turin newspaper La Stampa and was a Senator of the Kingdom and Ambassador to Germany – Pier Giorgio had everything a young man of his time, and not only, could wish for: social status, economic affluence, beauty, the physical vigour  allowing him to practise other sports besides mountaineering, such as horse-back riding, swimming and fencing, as well as a cheerful and entrepreneurial temperament.

In short, Pier Giorgio teaches us that to be appreciated by God it is not necessary to be advanced in years or to undergo who knows what sacrifices or deprivations. St John Paul II, who from the time of his Polish ministry already particularly loved this exuberant boy, proclaimed him consecrated Christian on 20 May 1990 and wanted him to be showcased to young people as an example of full Christian witness. He called him ‘the boy of the Beatitudes’, alluding to the more intimate and less conspicuous side of Pier Giorgio, to those  spirit and action qualities that made him consecrated. Actually, alongside the young man engaged in mountaineering ventures, there was a young man who, silently and covertly, made himself close to the sick, the poorest and most needy, to those he met in the street and those he went to visit, attempting to bring them comfort, and even donating the little money his parents passed on to him. Poverty is dirty, crumpled, smelly, and to those who asked him why he, so well-to-do and well-dressed, frequented certain places, he would simply reply: ‘Jesus visits me every morning in communion and I give back to him in the poor way I can’. A Dominican tertiary, committed with his whole self to the Conference of St Vincent de Paul, Catholic Action and other associations, Pier Giorgio “walked with Christ” in every moment of the day, moved by a constant, passionate, vital, energetic faith. “Live, don’t get by” was his motto, and with the strength of his enthusiasm he attracted other young people along with him in initiatives, having friendship and prayer at their centre. Frassati was a nonconformist Catholic and not subdued to rampant fascism, and he wrote: ‘Mussolini is indecent and tries to cover his misdeeds by hanging the crucifix in schools’ walls’. The socialist Filippo Turati wrote of him: ‘Amid hatred, pride and the spirit of domination and preying, this ‘Christian’ who believes, and acts as he believes, and who speaks as he feels, and walks the talk, this ‘uncompromising’ of his religion, is also a model that can teach something to everyone’.

At his funeral, which reminded some of those attending the one of St John Bosco’s, along with numerous notables, were countless strangers, mostly poor people he had helped. To the point that the father, faced with so much testimony from people unknown to the family, exclaimed surprised and distressed: “I don’t know my son!”.

Pier Giorgio’s remains rest in Turin Cathedral, in a chapel dedicated to him. But his journey upwards continues: the Church, in fact, has announced that in the Jubilee year 2025 Pier Giorgio Frassati will be proclaimed a saint!