Pier Giorgio Frassati: The Modern Saint in the Public Square

A few months ago, I discussed Fr. Luigi Sturzo and Christian Democracy in Italy during the first two decades of the twentieth century. As I explained, the early twentieth century was a complex time for Italian Catholics, marked by the trauma of the Risorgimento (Italian unification), the Capture of Rome, the unresolved Roman Question, and the papal prohibition against participation in national elections (the non expedit). Many Catholics despaired of Christianity’s ability to flourish in the political and social order shaped by the French Revolution and unification.

In this context, a new movement called “Christian Democracy” emerged within the Catholic community. It argued that Catholics should value freedoms such as education and political participation, which modern pluralistic democracy guaranteed, as means to pursue the common good in accordance with the Church’s social teaching. Sturzo was a leading voice in the Italian Christian Democratic movement, and in 1919 he founded the Italian Popular Party (PPI). His opposition to Fascism led to his exile in fall 1924; he spent the next two decades abroad.

With this context in mind, I recently found myself reading the letters of Pier Giorgio Frassati, the young man from Turin who died in the summer of 1925 at just twenty-four and who will be canonized this September 7. I was surprised to learn that Frassati’s views on Christian political engagement and on Christians’ place in modern society were very much in line with Sturzo’s.

Frassati was a committed supporter of the PPI and of Sturzo—whom he once called “that wonderful Minister of God . . . [from whom] in hours of discouragement I draw strength, as I do from Religion.” Like Sturzo, he rejected both a quietist view of Catholic life that would lead to withdrawal from public life, and antimodern crusades turning political action into a quest for power. Also like Sturzo, he opposed passive Catholic acceptance of modern liberal society, with its vices, materialism, and moral emptiness. He believed Catholics were called to transform society through example, charity, and persuasion.

The upcoming canonization and a couple of recent scholarly contributions make this a timely moment to reconsider Frassati’s political views.[1] Such a review may also correct a misconception I have encountered in American discussions of Frassati: that, toward the end of his life, he grew disillusioned with politics. This is misleading. Frassati saw political engagement as a fundamental Christian duty and believed modern democracy was as fertile a ground for it as any other. What disheartened him was the rise of an amoral, violent movement—Fascism—that used religion as a tool for power and threatened Italians’ freedoms. Even more disappointing was that many Catholics, despairing that Christianity could thrive in modern society, chose to place their hopes in it.

Turin: Cradle of the Risorgimento and Center of Divisions

Turin, where Frassati was born, was one of the most politically charged cities in Italy. It had been the cradle of the Risorgimento—the movement for Italian unification. From Turin, the king of Piedmont and his liberal prime minister, Count Cavour, launched their mission to liberate Italians from foreign rule and modernize the peninsula economically and culturally. They succeeded in 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II was crowned King of Italy. Turin was capital of the new kingdom until 1865. Pier Giorgio’s father, Alfredo Frassati, was a son of that generation: a liberal senator and founder of one of Italy’s most important newspapers, La Stampa (still active).

The liberal ideology behind the Risorgimento was strongly anticlerical. Figures like Giuseppe Mazzini saw the “abolition of the papacy” as Italy’s mission, and, after unification, the government passed laws restricting the Church’s freedom, nationalizing religious institutions, and closing convents. Frassati’s correspondence reflects this climate of anticlericalism in Italy and Turin.[2]

Turin was also Italy’s main industrial center, with 40% of its 500,000 residents employed as industrial workers. The Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci, himself from Turin, called it “the ideal place for revolution.” The city grew rapidly as rural workers arrived to take jobs in the metal and auto industries—most notably FIAT, still based there today. Many of these workers were drawn to socialism. In the 1919 elections, socialists won 54% in Turin. It was from Turin that the Red Biennium began on September 13, 1919: two years of intense strikes and factory occupations by workers calling for better conditions, hours, and wages.[3]

The events of the Red Biennium deepened divisions within the Socialist Party, which, since its founding in 1892, had already divided into “minimalists” (reformists) and “maximalists” (revolutionaries). The split became official at the 1921 party congress in Leghorn. Filippo Turati (who will be important for understanding Frassati’s political views) emerged as leader of the reformist faction.

1919 also saw the birth of the Italian Popular Party, founded by Fr. Luigi Sturzo. Its aim was to give Catholics a role in democratic politics and address Italy’s problems based on Catholic social teaching, especially Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. On the PPI’s founding, Gramsci said: “The formation of Catholics into a political party is the most significant event in Italian history after the Risorgimento.”[4]

Pier Giorgio Frassati Facing the Rise of Fascism

One side effect of the Red Biennium was scaring off industrialists and much of the bourgeoisie, who feared revolution and wondered who would protect them. This fear, combined with widespread discontent over World War I’s disappointing outcome, was exploited by Benito Mussolini, who founded the Fascist movement in Milan in 1919. Initially a group of discontented veterans, by the early 1920s the Fascists presented themselves as Italy’s defense against communist revolution. Militias of black-shirted men began breaking strikes and attacking socialists and their offices. Mussolini became Prime Minister after the 1922 March on Rome, and the following years saw the Fascist takeover of elections and state institutions, with a steep acceleration after 1925. The process was accompanied by widespread Fascist violence against political enemies—socialists, but also the PPI and Catholic individuals and groups.

Pier Giorgio’s judgment of Fascism fully aligned with that of his father, Alfredo. Biographers sometimes describe Pier Giorgio’s relationship with his parents as difficult, but this may partly reflect a hagiographical tendency to overstate opposition in order to highlight a saint’s exceptionality.[5] While Pier Giorgio rejected aspects of his parents’ worldview—for example, his father’s approach to “life as a problem to be solved,” as his sister put it, along with bourgeois materialism and ethics of gain—he also retained several of his father’s political values, such as commitment to liberty and acceptance of the institutions born from unification.[6] In line with these convictions, three days after the March on Rome (October 1922), Alfredo—who had been serving as Italian ambassador to Germany since late 1921—resigned from his post.[7]

As for Pier Giorgio, his correspondence shows clear, persistent opposition to Fascism. He probably did not fully grasp Fascism’s ideological depth, which was still evolving and would only fully express itself in the sacralization of the Fascist state after his death.[8] But from the start, he saw Fascism as an inherently violent and amoral movement—“a union of delinquents or thieves or assassins or idiots,” lacking ideals but supported by “dirty money, paid by the industrialists.”[9]

For Frassati, Fascism’s nature was evident in the widespread intimidation during the 1924 elections and in numerous acts of violence. He was shocked by the killing of Fr. Giovanni Minzoni in 1923 by Fascist blackshirts, and wrote after the 1924 assassination of socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti:

I remember the first elections [after the war] . . . the coming of Fascism, and I recall with joy that we have not been on the Fascist side not even for a single instant of our lives, but we have always fought against this scourge of Italy; and . . . we can thank God that he made use of poor Hon. Matteotti in the sight of the whole world to smash the infamies and the filth that are hidden under Fascism.[10]

What saddened Pier Giorgio even more than Fascism’s rise was that, in the face of all the violence, many Catholics still placed their trust in it. In June 1923, upon learning that Mussolini had visited the Cathedral of Borgo San Donnino and the organ had played the Fascist hymn Giovinezza (whose refrain includes “Youth, youth / Spring of beauty, / In Fascism is the salvation”), he wrote to a friend: “It takes a lot of gall to profane with such hymns the temple, the house of God, where Our Lord Jesus Christ is truly present in the tabernacle.”[11]

His greatest disappointment came in October 1923, when the Catholic university students’ club “Cesare Balbo,” of which Frassati was a member, displayed its flag during Mussolini’s visit to Turin. Afterward, Frassati resigned from the club. In a letter to the board, he accused the president of ignoring diocesan directives and ruling secretively, disregarding members’ opposition. In a personal letter to the president, he wrote:

I am really upset that you hung the Flag—which so many times, as unworthy as I am, I have carried in religious processions—from the balcony in honor of a man who undoes works of mercy, who doesn’t keep the Fascists under control but even allows them to kill Ministers of God like Father Minzoni, etc., and allows them to do other filthy things and then tries to cover up their misdeeds by putting up the Crucifix in the Schools, etc.[12]

The last line refers to the fact that, between the spring and fall of that year, the Fascist government had passed the Gentile school reform, which, among other measures, placed crucifixes in all public school classrooms. This happened at the same time as Fascist violence against Catholics and Catholic associations that did not align with Fascism—for Frassati, an obvious sign that religion was merely a tool in the Fascist pursuit of power.

However, the number of Catholics placing their hopes in Fascism grew, including within the PPI, causing tensions in the party. Though still a supporter of the PPI, a saddened Frassati condemned, in his letters, the “shameful behavior of members of the People’s Party” who had started calling for collaboration with Fascism. “Where is the fine program, where is the Faith which motivates our people?” he asked.[13] “How can a party call itself Catholic, when it supports a government that has no morals?”[14]

Pier Giorgio’s Vision for Catholic Political Involvement

While Pier Giorgio’s sources of disappointment are clear, which political leaders did he support? What was his positive vision for Catholic political involvement, and what were its sources?

One sentence from Pius XI’s December 1922 encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio clearly resonated with Pier Giorgio, who quoted it in three different letters in January 1923:
“True peace is more a fruit of Christian love for one’s neighbor than a fruit of justice.”[15]

This statement on the primacy of charity—drawn by the pope from Aquinas (and reiterated in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church §494)—perfectly captured Frassati’s charism: he made this teaching his rule of life, living it daily with devoted care for the poor of Turin, students, workers, the sick, and anyone in need, providing food, money, goods, and healthcare. His many biographers offer countless examples of how his charity drew others—both recipients and observers—to the Church.

Pier Giorgio’s commitment to charity was aligned with (and at least partially inspired by) the Church’s teaching in Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, a document he clearly valued. In a letter to a friend dated May 15, 1924, he noted the date as the “Anniversary of the Rerum Novarum.”[16] In his personal copy of the encyclical, he highlighted sections 22–25, where Leo XIII (drawing on Aquinas) stressed that Christians should use property beyond their needs to help the needy, fostering bonds of friendship and brotherly love between rich and poor.[17]

Despite the concrete nature of much of his charitable work, Frassati seemed to regard education as the most essential form of charity. He believed modern society’s greatest poverty was spiritual and moral, making “moral regeneration” its most urgent necessity.[18] His biographers note that, even while offering concrete assistance—money, clothing, healthcare—he sought to make such acts of generosity opportunities for personal relationships and evangelism.[19] His concern with education led him, in 1922, to join Milites Mariae, a club devoted—in his own words—to giving Catholic students “a solid foundation in apologetics in order to face the continual dangers to which they are frequently exposed in the public schools, which are unfortunately very corrupt.”[20]

Frassati believed that Catholics had a special responsibility toward their contemporaries and modern society: as the “only ones who possess the Truth,” they had a unique role in the regeneration of the “inner spirit” the world so desperately needed.[21] Hence, his view of the three distinct apostolates to which Catholic youth were called: the “apostolate of good example,” serving as witnesses to a “life guided by Christian moral law”; the “apostolate of charity”; and the “apostolate of persuasion . . . one of the most beautiful and necessary.”[22]

Frassati firmly believed in the truth and superiority of Christian morals, and thought Christians ought to persuade others of them. At the same time, he prudentially recognized that convincing people of this might take time and, meanwhile, the state would need to allow a plurality of institutions. His words on Christian and civil marriage (at a time when Christian marriage had no legal standing) are telling:

Yesterday my sister was married with the Rites of the Catholic Church: the rite is magnificent; the civil marriage is comical in comparison; I would hope that in the near future civil marriage would be abolished completely and only marriage in the Church would be in force and at least, as a temporary solution, both forms would be valid in the eyes of the State.[23]

So, Frassati saw charity as Catholics’ first duty—with education and persuasion as its most essential forms—but not their only duty. While he wrote that true peace stems above all from charity and often reminded others that perfect justice belongs only to the next life, this belief never lessened his commitment to justice here and now, nor his dedication to political and economic reforms for a more just society, especially for the vulnerable.[24]

After all, the same encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, from which he drew the quote on the primacy of charity, stated a few lines earlier: “the peace of Christ can only be a peace of justice” (§34). And Aquinas, the encyclical’s source, argued that while peace flows from charity, it depends on justice, “in so far as justice removes the obstacles to peace” (echoed in CSDC §494).[25]

Frassati’s commitment to justice (alongside charity) was arguably at the root of his support for the PPI—in which he was deeply involved, campaigning for its candidates, promoting party newspapers, cleaning PPI offices, and ushering at the 1923 PPI Congress in Turin.[26]

More specifically, Frassati supported the “left” wing of the party. In my earlier essay, I discussed divisions within the PPI—especially the opposition to Sturzo from the party’s “right” wing and those who, in the 1920s, grew open to collaboration with Fascism. But the Sturzian “center” also faced some opposition from the party’s “left.” A key figure was Guido Miglioli. Before the PPI’s founding, Miglioli had led Catholic agrarian leagues advocating land reform and redistribution (unlike socialists, who pushed for nationalization). He brought concern for the agrarian poor into the PPI, finding an ally in Sturzo, who had supported agrarian reform in Sicily. However, Miglioli saw the PPI as defending Christian industrial and rural proletarians, while Sturzo aimed to represent all classes.[27]

Of Pier Giorgio, his sister Luciana recalled that “he was for Miglioli.” In a 1921 letter, Frassati wrote that the Catholic university club Cesare Balbo needed “an energetic president with left-wing tendencies . . . who will carry the Cesare Balbo banner alongside the workers and peasants in the struggle for the Faith.”[28] He believed Catholics should offer their own solution to the problems of the lower classes, attracting them away from communists. On the one hand, his sister recalled him going around Turin at night hanging anti-communist flyers, risking confrontation with armed communists.[29] On the other hand, Frassati saw some merit in the communists’ motivations, acknowledging that, unlike Fascists, “at least they stood for a high ideal, that of elevating the working class which for so many years now has been exploited by people without consciences.”[30] For Frassati, that goal should be pursued, more justly and effectively, by Catholics and the PPI. Thus, within the party, he backed those, like Miglioli, most attuned to the needs of workers and the agrarian poor.

Bridging the gap between elite Catholics—such as university students—and peasants and workers was a major concern for Frassati. He believed students should leave their comfort zones, build ties with the working classes and rural poor, and address their needs. At the 1921 FUCI congress in Ravenna, he proposed creating an organization to unite university students and workers, though the idea was rejected. He drew inspiration from Fr. Carl Sonnenschein, the “St. Francis of Berlin,” whom he met while living in Germany in 1921–22 during his father’s ambassadorship; Sonnenschein had founded a Catholic circle that brought students and workers together.[31] It was also in Germany, after visiting the mines of the Ruhr Valley, that Frassati decided to study mining engineering—to serve Christ by serving miners.[32]

Another issue that aligned Frassati with the PPI’s left wing was openness to an alliance with socialists for anti-Fascist purposes (though, on this point, Sturzo’s center and the left were substantially aligned).[33] In a July 1922 letter, Frassati expressed hope for an alliance between the “two Filippos”—“a government of the People’s Party–Socialist”—that would give Italy “a Ministry capable of commanding respect, and which finally puts an end to the huge scandal represented by the Fascist movement.”[34] The “two Filippos” were Filippo Meda, a PPI leader, and the aforementioned Filippo Turati, leader of the reformist socialists. In supporting this scenario, Frassati anticipated a position that Sturzo would also publicly adopt later on.

What about methods—how did Frassati think Christians should pursue justice? His attitude toward violence offers insight into his understanding of Christian political action. Biographers stress his principled opposition to political violence, and his letters show he regarded violence as one of Fascism’s clearest signs of moral failure.[35]

Yet his rhetoric often borrowed imagery of battle. He urged friends to action in military terms—speaking of Catholic youth as an army, calling for victory, and quoting Constantine’s in hoc signo vinces.[36] He even displayed a touch of machismo in remarking that the Cesare Balbo Club needed “an energetic president with left-wing tendencies; certainly not Severi, because the Cesare Balbo Club would turn into a women’s club.”[37]

Pier Giorgio also did not shy away from a fist fight. Two episodes are often cited: when he stood guard with a stick to protect a noticeboard after a FUCI flier inviting students to prayer was torn down by anticlerical students, and when a Fascist gang assaulted his family home and he did not hesitate to deliver a punch that sent them fleeing.[38]

A 1922 letter written after a weekend trip may help explain these apparent contradictions. Frassati describes “more than 20,000 enthusiastic young men march[ing] before the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of Novara . . . a marvelous army, preceded by the fine units of the vanguard, organized and disciplined like soldiers.”[39]

For him, the most marvelous army was young people following the Eucharist; the strongest weapon was daily encounters with Christ in the Eucharist and in prayer, from which Christians drew courage to face the world and carry out the “moral regeneration” that society so needed. This did not rule out political organization—he surely devoted considerable energy to campaigning for PPI candidates because he wanted them to win. But he firmly rejected offensive political violence, seeing victory as the fruit of persuasion within democratic institutions. Physical force he justified only defensively, to protect spaces where Catholics could witness to the peace and charity of Christ.

Catholic Associationism: Subsidiary Institutions for the Regeneration of Society

Another imposing aspect of Frassati’s biography with meaningful political implications was his commitment to associationism. He belonged to an impressive number of Catholic organizations and clubs—at least fifteen between 1918 and his death.[40] Alongside Milites Mariae and his support for PPI members promoting mutual banks, Catholic cooperatives, and unions, a few stand out:

· The Conferences of Saint Vincent likely received more of his energy than any other organization, in line with his belief in the primacy of charity. He experienced one significant moment of crisis, when the Conferences decided not to help an impoverished family because of the immorality of the daughters, who had turned to prostitution. In a letter to a friend, Frassati wrote:

I would abolish certain conferences of St. Vincent; when there are men from another generation, so full of Christian zeal, who don’t even know how to warn the parents about the alleged misconduct of their daughters and thus try to do good work, but instead they prefer to abandon that family, it’s better that the conference didn’t exist; not because the members are acting out of bad faith, but because it’s not adapted to modern times.[41]

The episode illustrates Frassati’s belief that Christians should not judgmentally put themselves above modern society or retreat from it, but get involved to lift it up, correct vices, and witness to the beauty of Christian life and morals.

· He personally founded the Society of the Tipi Loschi (the “Sinister Ones”), where Frassati called himself Robespierre, his friend Danton, and the board of directors “Terror”: surely not an expression of their embrace of Jacobin values, but a sign that Frassati was able to treat one of the darkest pages of modernity with irony, rather than fear.[42]

· Pax Romana was an international organization that promoted cooperation among Catholic students across national boundaries, aiming to bring about the moral regeneration that Europe needed, in order to preserve peace after the tragedy of WWI. Frassati saw modernity’s moral—and therefore political—crisis as inherently transnational. Partly due to his love for Germany, he had little patience for nationalism.[43]

Frassati embodied the unity of the Church’s charisms. In his youth, he considered becoming a Capuchin friar; the Jesuit Istituto Sociale in Turin shaped his adolescence; and in May 1922, he entered the Dominican Third Order. He saw no contradiction in these diverse charisms but drew strength from all of them.[44]

In this way, he was both a witness to and a product of the remarkable vivacity of Catholic associationism at the turn of the century, a movement energized by Rerum Novarum. As Ernesto Preziosi notes, the 1920s and 1930s saw extraordinary growth in Catholic associational life, which “received impulse from the magisterium of the popes”: “associational life became mass-based, popular, animated by a strong spirituality,” producing “an incredibly rich array of subsidiary institutions . . . all with the goal of bringing to fullness—with a certain fierceness—the defense of truth.”[45]

This associational world was rich and varied—democratic, paradoxically, in a time when many Catholics struggled to accept democracy. Yet Frassati perceived no tension in participating in these various associations, just as he saw no conflict between his faith and his commitment to democratic politics. He engaged fully in this vibrant life, fiercely defending its freedom—even, if necessary, with a fist or stick.

It was precisely on associationism that the Fascist regime and the Church would first clash. As I explain in my earlier essay, the 1931 crisis over the freedom of Catholic Action revealed to many that Christianity was fundamentally incompatible with Fascism’s claims over education and ethics. Frassati did not live to see this moment, but his tireless defense of Catholic associations points to where he believed society’s renewal would arise: not political takeover, but the bottom-up action of Christians, empowered not only as individuals but as members of voluntary communities.

Conclusion: Frassati’s Savonarola and his (Supposed) Integralism

One biographer, Marcello Staglieno, calls Pier Giorgio Frassati an “integralist,” citing his fascination with Br. Girolamo Savonarola’s “theocracy.”[46] Indeed, when Frassati entered the Dominican Third Order, he chose the name Girolamo in honor of Savonarola, the Dominican friar whose sermons in the late fifteenth century helped bring down the Medici regime, temporarily liberating the Florentine republic.

Whether Savonarola—who inspired and morally guided the republic but never held office—actually sought a theocracy is debatable, and a topic for a different essay. Regardless, Frassati’s writings give no sign of attraction to theocratic government.

By his own account, Savonarola’s religious fervor and moral integrity were the main reasons Frassati chose him as a model. He called himself a “fervent admirer of this friar, who died on the scaffold as a saint,” and who fought “corrupt morals.”[47] This matches his view of the Florentine Middle Ages (and he likely saw Savonarola—anachronistically—as an expression of medieval Florence). In a 1925 speech to FUCI students, he urged young Catholics to “cooperate generously in the moral regeneration of society worldwide so that a radiant dawn may break, in which all nations recognize Jesus Christ as King not only in words but in all their people’s lives, as the Florentine Republic did in the Middle Ages.”[48] For Frassati, moral regeneration was the path to that new dawn—the same mission Savonarola had pursued.

But Frassati’s choice of Savonarola also arguably had a political dimension.[49] Frassati had encountered Savonarola through the workers’ association Circolo Savonarola, one of the groups he joined. This circle was founded, among others, by Dominican Fr. Filippo Robotti, and its members were almost entirely FIAT workers from one of Turin’s most intensely working-class neighborhoods.[50] Frassati often accompanied Robotti when he gave talks to workers. As Giacinto Scaltriti, O.P., notes, a broader movement in the “white leagues” at the turn of the century reclaimed Savonarola’s example; numerous circles, especially in rural and working-class Italy, adopted his name. To them, Savonarola symbolized a model of faith and a fighter for the poor against tyranny—a popular hero and “preacher of the desperate ones.”[51]

Scaltriti and Cecilia Ginoli suggest that, in upholding Savonarola, Frassati implicitly defended a view of the Middle Ages as deeply Christian societies that recognized the ultimate sovereignty of Jesus Christ, yet remained free and popular. This vision did not conflate religious government with political authority but saw them as distinct, corresponding to the experience of the free comuni of northern and central Italy. Thus, Savonarola stood as an alternative to experiences of the Middle Ages as based on rigid feudal hierarchies, paralleling the entrenched class divisions of industrial modernity. At the same time, Savonarola also represented an alternative to the rise of Renaissance princes and condottieri, and to a Machiavellian view of politics. For Frassati, Mussolini embodied a mixture of both: a Machiavellian ethic (or rather, absence of ethics), enabled by the collusion of self-serving bourgeois and industrialists.[52]

Perhaps not coincidentally, in 1922 a New York Times article, titled “Luigi Sturzo, the New Savonarola,” linked Sturzo to the Renaissance Dominican. The article reported Sturzo’s response when asked about his party’s program:

Make [Italy] again the cultural light of the world; decentralize governmental administration; eviscerate bureaucracy; give the people education and teach them to understand organic liberty, show them the advantages of communal autonomy; strive to develop Italy’s commerce . . .; teach her people to live in fear of God, whose mercies, indulgences, permissions and promises are set forth by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

Sturzo trusted that a context of “organic liberty” and democratic institutions would provide fertile ground for people to learn to “live in fear of God” and embrace the Church’s teachings.

Frassati shared this conviction. Like Sturzo (and Savonarola), he loved liberty: in 1923, writing to a German friend, he lamented Italy’s loss of freedom, calling it “the most beautiful and best thing that God has given to all men . . . without which life becomes difficult.”[53] Six months later, he closed a letter to another friend with the words:

I leave you yelling
Long live Matteotti. Long live Liberty.
Long live Christian Democracy.
Death to the tyrants.[54]

Despite this, the words “integral” or “integralism” could apply to Frassati in one sense: he pursued a unity of life—an integrated life where politics, culture, relationships, and charity were lived in light of Christian truth and the supreme kingship of Jesus Christ. His life rejected a quietist, individualistic Christianity confined to private piety, and he condemned Christians who withdrew from modern society out of fear of its immorality. Instead, he urged full engagement with the modern world—without yielding to its vices—charitably and courageously witnessing to the truth.

Still, this integrated vision did not translate into political integralism or nostalgia for a union of throne and altar. Regarding politics and government, Frassati’s integral conception of Christian life implied the need for a public space where Christians were free to judge all things—including politics—in light of Jesus’ teachings, and free to share the beauty and fulfillment of this truth without obstacle. In line with subsidiarity, he hoped for a polity in which Catholic associations could flourish unhindered, though political agents still had a duty to enact reforms that upheld justice as far as possible. Perhaps this vision of a unified life explains his enduring appeal to generations of young people from 1925 to the present day?