Italy – Recognition of Venerable Andrea Beltrami, SDB

19 May 2022

(ANS - Omegna) - On May 17, 2022, the canonical recognition of the mortal remains of Venerable Andrea Beltrami, Salesian priest (1870-1897), took place in Omegna, Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola. At the request of the Postulator of the Salesian Congregation, Fr Pierluigi Cameroni, and after obtaining the nihil obstat of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Bishop of Novara, Monsignor Franco Giulio Brambilla, delegated the Rev. Fabrizio Poloni to preside over the required operations, assisted by the other members of the Tribunal: Fr Andrea Primatesta, promoter of Justice; Fr Luca Longo, Notary; and Dr. Antonio De Consoli, a medical expert. The conservative treatment work was entrusted to Luciano Griggio, deacon, an expert in that field.

More than a century after the transfer and burial of the Venerable from the city cemetery to the Collegiate Church of Sant'Ambrogio in Omegna, such an operation became necessary in view of the preservation treatment of the mortal remains and as a result of the movement of prayer and interest that in recent years has accompanied the figure and testimony of the young Salesian priest, an Omegna native, thanks to the pastoral action of parish priest Fr Gianmario Lanfranchini and the prayer group that was formed to promote the Cause of Beatification of the illustrious Omegna native.

The mortal remains of Venerable Andrea Beltrami, which cannot enjoy any public cult, nor those privileges that are reserved only for the body of those who have been beatified or canonized, at the end of the preservation process will be placed again in a new urn in the same place where they were in the parish church.

Some signs accompanied the recognition: the fact that it took place in the Baptistery of St. John's where the baptismal font where Andrea Beltrami was born to the life of God's children on June 25, 1870, the day after his birth, reminds us how every journey of holiness is the maturation of baptismal grace. In addition, finding some signs on the casket that recall Christ's passion: the crucifix, and the face of Christ crowned with thorns, recall how the experience of pain and illness that marked the young Beltrami's life are a source of maturation and sanctification. Finally, an unusual form, finding on the cover of the Venerable's casket, in addition to his photograph, that of his parents and other relatives, expresses the deep family communion.

The testimony of Fr. Andrea Beltrami is paradigmatic of a whole strand of Salesian holiness that, begins with him, with Blessed Augustus Czartoryski and Blessed Luigi Variara. He is the forerunner of the victim-oblative dimension of the Salesian charism: "The mission that God entrusts to me is to pray and to suffer," he said. "Neither heal nor die, but live to suffer," was his motto. Most exact in his observance of the Rule, he had a filial openness with his superiors and a most ardent love for Don Bosco and the Congregation. His bed would become an altar and cathedra, where he would immolate himself together with Jesus and from which he would teach how to love, how to offer, and how to suffer. His little room became his whole world, from which he wrote and in which he celebrated his Mass: "I offer myself as a victim with Him, for the sanctification of priests, for the men of the whole world."

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ANS - “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana” is a on-line almost daily publication, the communication agency of the Salesian Congregation enrolled in the Press Register of the Tibunal of Rome as n 153/2007.

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