Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows

St. Gabriel was born at Assisi on March 1, 1838 AD, the eleventh child of a lawyer who held office for the Papal States. His father, Sante Possenti, carried him to San Rufino the same day, to the font where St. Francis of Assisi had been baptized.

The family moved to Spoleto, and in the winter of 1842 AD two of his sisters died and then his mother, Agnese Frisciotti Possenti, at forty-one. He was not yet four, and his sister Maria Luisa and the household governess raised him. The Brothers of the Christian Schools taught him his first letters and his catechism.

At twelve St. Gabriel passed to the college of the Jesuits at Spoleto, where he took excellent results in Latin oration and verse and in the study of the Italian ode, and in 1854 AD a prose composition of his in Italian won a prize at the Accademia di poesia. At the end of the course he took the gold medals of philosophy and of honour, and his sister Teresa kept one of them.

He spent hours dressing for parties, read novels, and went to the ballrooms and the theatres. His schoolfellows called him *il damerino* (*the society young man*). Through all those years he heard Mass every morning and said the rosary every night.

In 1851 AD an illness of the throat brought him near death, and he promised God to enter religious life if he recovered. His health came back and the promise went unkept. He promised again after he narrowly escaped being shot on a hunting trip, and forgot that promise too.

Two years later the throat illness returned, and brought him nearer to death than the first. The Passionist lives, drawing on the sworn depositions taken for his cause, record that he wrapped a picture of the Jesuit martyr Blessed Andrew Bobola about his throat, renewed his promise, and woke the next morning cured. He asked the Jesuits to receive him, they accepted him, and he did not go.

Cholera at Spoleto killed his sister Maria Luisa, who had cared for him since their mother's death. The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints records that the loss tested him enormously and turned his mind again to religious life, while his father tried to dissuade him.

According to longstanding Catholic tradition, when the epidemic ended the ancient icon of Mary was carried in procession through the city, on August 22, 1856 AD. According to longstanding Catholic tradition, carried by the early biographies and the canonization-process testimonies, the Blessed Virgin asked him as the image passed why he had not kept his promise. He took a priest's advice and resolved to enter the Congregation of the Most Holy Passion.

St. Gabriel told his father he had already applied to the Passionist Provincial. Sante Possenti was sixty-six, had given one son to the Dominicans and another to the seminary, and refused. The Sanctuary of San Gabriele records that he took the choice for a passing mood, because his son had made such resolutions before and they had come to nothing.

His father, hoping to keep that son at home, sent his brother Michele, back for a short time from Rome, to talk him out of the novitiate; Michele came away from the conversation and told their father to let him go. After a restless night the father gave his consent and his blessing. A letter went to Morrovalle, where the novice house had exactly one place free.

At eighteen St. Gabriel was clothed in the Passionist habit and took the name Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. Father Norbert, his vice-master and then his spiritual director, was with him from the day he entered until the day he died.

In 1861 AD his superiors let him bind himself by vow to be Our Lady's champion for life. He received minor orders that May, and the subdiaconate was arranged for the September ember days. A cold caught at Pievetorina had settled on his chest and never cleared, and that summer he began visibly to waste.

By Christmas 1861 AD he was too weak to go down to the church, and Father Norbert forbade him the Mass of Christmas night. He had sent his father his last letter on December 19, 1861 AD, and he wrote to his brother Michele eleven days later. A violent hemorrhage came in the middle of February 1862 AD, and the physician advised that the last sacraments be given.

He asked for the viaticum on February 18, 1862 AD, nine days before he died. His fellow students did not leave his bedside through the night of February 26. He died at half past six the next morning, holding to his heart the image of the Crucified with the Sorrowful Mother.

St. Gabriel was buried in the crypt of the church beside the retreat, and lay there thirty years. When a commission came to open the grave on October 17, 1892 AD, hundreds of men and women barricaded the church and dared them to touch the tomb. The next day about four thousand people covered the hill, and the delegates found nothing in the vault but his bones.

Cures were reported at the tomb from that week, and the register at Isola recorded about ninety in 1897 AD alone. Pope Pius X beatified him in St. Peter's on May 31, 1908 AD. Pope Benedict XV canonized him there on May 13, 1920 AD, before more than sixty thousand people.