Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati is well known for his devotion to Our Lady and his service to the poor. However, he also suffered for love.
His story leaves a valuable message about true Christian love.
“She is the one I loved with a pure love”
Frassati narrated his heartaches through several letters to his friends between 1924-1925, in which he recounts his love for Laura Hidalgo, a young woman who lost her parents and took care of her younger brother.
According to FrassatiUSA, the group promoting the canonization of Blessed Pier Giorgio, the young man met Laura in the spring of 1923 in Little Saint Bernard, where he went skiing.
She was a member of "Gaetana Agnesi," a Catholic female club of university students, and she soon became friends with Frassati.
In 1924, he confessed his feelings for Laura to his sister Luciana. He came "with his big black eyes and told me that he was in love with a girl I know," Luciana recalled.
Unfortunately, Frassati's relationship with his parents was complicated, and they were on the verge of separation. He then decided not to reveal his feelings, so as not to create more family drama.
Frassati came from a wealthy family, and he feared his parents would not approve of Laura, as she was not of the same social status as his.
"I am reading Italo Mario Angeloni’s romance novel 'I Loved That Way' where he describes in the first part his love for an Andalusian woman, and believe me, I am moved because it seems like my own love story."
"I have also loved like this, only that in the novel it is the Andalusian girl who sacrifices herself, while, in my case, I will be the one sacrificed, because that is what God wants," Frassati wrote in a letter to his friend Isidore Bonini.
FrassatiUSA said Frassati "not only did not say anything to Laura about his feelings, but he did not even hint at them."
However, in letters to friends, he expressed how painful it was to make that decision, especially when his sister was married in 1925, while he was "sacrificing the idea of a relationship that could have brought him much joy."
"...she is whom I loved with a pure Love and today in renouncing it I desire her happiness. I urge you to pray that God gives me the Christian strength to bear it serenely and that He gives her all earthly happiness and the strength to reach the Goal for which we were created," Frassati said.
"Thus she will always be for me a good friend who, having known her in the most dangerous years of my life, will have helped me to keep on the right path toward the Goal."