Saint Joseph Cottolengo (1786 – 1842) signifies a life of total service to others. He was born the eldest of twelve children, into a comfortably well-off middle class family. He discerned a class to the priesthood, entered the seminary (eventually receiving a doctorate in theology), and was ordained a priest on June 8th, 1811. All of his stipends and other gifts he donated to the poor, and it was the poverty he saw all round him – exacerbated by the brutal occupation of the French revolutionary troops – that moved him to a more evangelical life.
He sold everything, and set up a house in Turin for those with nothing, simply taking them in to care for them, spiritually and, as he could, corporally. Thus began, with two nuns and a patient dying of cancer, ‘The Little House of Divine Providence‘, which soon attracted others, helpers and benefactors and many more in need. Father Cottolengo died of typhoid he contracted from one of his patients, on April 30th, 1842, and was beatified by Pope Benedict XV in 1917, and later canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1934. He is mentioned by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2005 encyclical, Deus Caritas Est.
The The Little House of Divine Providence still exists in various houses across the world, working with and for the poor, quietly and hiddenly with the poor, which is often God’s way.
