On May 23, 2024, Pope Francis officially recognized the miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, Founder of the Consolata Missionaries.
Blessed Joseph Allamano will be canonized, together with Marie-Léonie Paradis, Elena Guerra and Carlo Acutis, by the Pope himself, in a date to be set.
The universal mission of the Church was Allamano’s dream.
The miracle that will bring Blessed Giuseppe Allamano on the altars happened in Brazil, in the Amazon forest, where the Consolata missionaries have been proclaiming the Gospel since 1948. On Feb. 7, 1996, the indigenous Sorino Yanomami was attacked by a jaguar that fractured his skull. It took nine hours to have Sorino reach Boa Vista hospital. The scene the doctors face is desperate; the native is rushed into surgery and then admitted to the intensive care unit. Next to him, with his wife, are eight Consolata missionaries who began praying Blessed Joseph Allamano. After ten days, Sorino woke up without showing any neurological injury. After rehabilitation, on May 8 he returned to his village fully healed and resumed his life as a forest dweller ever since.
“As the Father sent me, so I send you”
Born in Castelnuovo Don Bosco, Italy, on January 21, 1851, Allamano was a priest of the diocese of Turin, who made his own the Church’s call to universal mission. As a young boy Joseph grew up among the Salesians, then, as a teenager, he opts for the diocesan seminary. He is ordained a priest at 22, and very soon he occupies key positions in his diocese: he is appointed the rector of the “Convitto” – the diocesan center for the priests renewal – where many young priests will pick him as their councilor and spiritual director; at 29, he is called to be the Rector of Turin’s most popular shrine – the Consolata – , which he restored to its former glory. His greatest desire, however, is to leave for the missions, but poor health does not allow him to fulfill his dream. Still, far from getting discouraged, he passes on the fire that burns in his heart to young priests and lay people, who, duly trained, set in numbers for distant lands.
At the foot of the Consolata, Allamano laid the foundations for a great missionary activity, led by a religious society of priests and brothers founded in 1901 and one of sisters founded in 1910. Accompanied by Cottolengo Sisters, the first four missionaries – two priests and two brothers – left for Kenya, in 1902. The most important tenets of his teaching to them were that one who wants to be a true missionary, first has to be a saint; and that when good is done, it has to be done well. The main goal of the mission is the announcement of the Gospel, but always hand in hand with the improvement of the people’s state of life. People will be attracted – he would say – by a religion that not only promises to them a better life in Heaven, but that helps them to improve their life already here on earth.
Blessed Joseph Allamano died in Turin, Italy, on February 16, 1926. His missionaries, by then, where present in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Mozambique. Now they work in 28 countries and have vocations form 25 countries throughout the world.
Immediately after the canonization news broke, Father James Lengarin and Mother Lucia Bortolomasi – the Superiors General of the two Institutes – sent a message to all missionaries, lay people and groups of friends of the Consolata Family, joyfully communicating that “the long-awaited day has arrived, which our hearts have been waiting for a long time: FATHER FOUNDER WILL BE CANONIZED BY POPE FRANCIS!”
“The process for the recognition of the miracle in favor of Sorino Yanomami – they write – is now concluded: all that is missing is the communication of the date of this event so luminous for our Consolata Family! […] Blessed Joseph Allamano, our Founding Father, the one who gave us the Consolata spirit, has always been a light for us. At the end of his life he wrote with conviction: ‘I am consoled that I always tried to do God’s will’ (Letter to Missionaries and Missionaries, Oct. 1, 1923).
Here is his path to holiness! And to us, his sons and daughters, he shows that the first end of our Institutes is the sanctification of their members, a holiness that expands to embrace and illuminate the path of the laity as well. The Founder’s insistence for us his sons and daughters has become a way of life: ‘first saints and then missionaries.’
Now the universal Church also recognizes him as a saint, this light spreads to all places, and becomes more and more a beacon for us on the mission roads. Let us thank the Lord for this gift for us and for the Church! May this blessed time be an opportunity to feel him more and more FATHER and enjoy his living presence among us.”