Saint Who?
Saints Who Promoted Eucharistic Devotion
Saint John Baptist Scalabrini
Bishop and founder († 1905) Feast: June 1
John Baptist Scalabrini was born and baptized on July 8, 1839. Ordained a priest at twenty-three, he was made bishop of Piacenza when he was thirty-five. As bishop he made multiple pastoral visits to his parishes, and was dubbed “the apostle of the catechism” by Blessed Pius IX (see “Saint Who?” of June 13). He also ministered to Italy’s many emigrants, laboring to protect them as they departed for new lands. He provided for their material needs and founded the Missionaries of Saint Charles to accompany them, to be “migrants with the migrants.”
Bishop Scalabrini was profoundly Eucharistic in his leadership, and urged all the faithful to devote themselves to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. “Visits to the Blessed Sacrament are a necessity for the heart,” he wrote. And when he traveled to visit the missionaries and emigrants in America, he brought as a gift for his first mission parish a large monstrance.
He urged his priests to cultivate devotion to the Eucharist. “All should be exhorted to pay a visit to Christ on the evening of Sundays and holy days.” He also said, “[Priests] are to prepare their sermons before the Blessed Sacrament, and thus allow Christ to suggest the appropriate words to them.” John Baptist Scalabrini died after twenty-nine years in his see. He was canonized in 2022.
Loving Father, through the intercession of Saint John Baptist Scalabrini, may the Blessed Sacrament
give us all wisdom and charity.
