Saint Guido Maria Conforti

Guido Maria Conforti was born in Casalora di Ravadese, near Parma, on March 30, 1865, the eighth of ten children in a family of landowners rooted in the Parma countryside since the Middle Ages. As a boy, on his way to school, he would stop in front of a crucifix in the church of La Pace: he said it looked at him and spoke to him. He wanted to become a missionary and couldn’t: his health wouldn’t allow it, and the doctors forbade it more than once. So he did what he could do. In 1895, at thirty, he founded in Parma the Pious Society of Saint Francis Xavier for Foreign Missions — the Xaverians — to send to China the people he couldn’t reach himself. Over the next two years the first ones set out. He was named archbishop of Ravenna at thirty-six and had to leave after two years because of his health; he went back to Parma, where he was bishop for twenty-six years. In 1928, at sixty-three and ill, he finally managed to go to China to visit his missionaries. He stayed three months, and it was the journey of his life. He died in Parma on November 5, 1931. Benedict XVI proclaimed him a saint in 2011. If your name is Guido, today is your name day.