Friday, July 27, 2018

A Lay Model for Young People

From Zenit:
Pope Francis will canonize Blessed Nunzio Sulprizio (1817-1836), a young Italian layperson, on October 14, 2018, during the Synod of Bishops on Youth held in Rome. The pope, therefore, gives the young people a model of their age, in addition to the six other blessed who will be canonized that day. He announced this canonization himself at a public ordinary consistory on July 19, 2018, at the Vatican, an event all the more noticed that it took place during the summer.

Born on April 13, 1817, in Pescosansonesco, Blessed Nunzio Sulprizio was an orphan very early. He lived with a very violent uncle who beat him. Because of this violence, the young craftsman of Naples suffered from a wound in the leg, earning him the nickname “the little saint lame”. In spite of his illness, the young man assisted the other patients, and, in his poverty, relieved the misery of the poor. He spent the last two years of his life at Naples’ hospital for the incurable where he died on May 5, 1836, at 19 years of age.

Pope Paul VI, who beatified him on December 1, 1963, offered him as a model for young people: “He will tell you that you, young people, can regenerate within you the world in which Providence has called you to live and that it is up to you, the first ones, to devote yourself to the salvation of a society which needs precisely strong and intrepid souls.” Six other blessed will be canonized in October: Pope Paul VI and Salvadoran Bishop Oscar Romero as well as two Italian priests, a German nun, and a Spanish nun. (Read more.)
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