Saint Paul of the Cross

Paul Francis Danei was born in Ovada, in Monferrato, on January 3, 1694, into a family of merchants of modest means. He received his first education from a priest who ran a school in Cremolino. At twenty-five, after enlisting for a few months in the Venetian army and realizing how pointless it was, he had the insight that would fill his life. The bishop of Alessandria allowed him to withdraw for forty days to a room next to the sacristy in Castellazzo Bormida, and in those forty days he wrote the rule of the congregation he wanted to found. That’s where the Passionists came from: religious devoted to keeping alive the memory of Christ’s Passion, with a fourth vow that binds them to it. On their chest they wear a black emblem with a heart and a cross. It took decades for it all to be approved. Paul spent his life preaching parish missions in the Maremma and in Lazio — areas that were then poor, malarial and neglected — and founding retreat houses in out-of-the-way places. He preached to people who had never heard the faith explained. He also founded the Passionist nuns, a cloistered order. He died in Rome on October 18, 1775, at eighty-one. Pius IX declared him a saint in 1867. If your name is Paul, today is your name day — even though many wait for June 29.