A long anticipated, well written, and interesting biography of the Servant of God Fr. Damiano Sfascia of Cingoli, a capuchin priest of the Marche Province, is now in our hands. It is the official biography of the beatification process and it comes at the start of the process itself.

The beginning of the process will be a memorable date for those who - though few- knew him, heard him, and sought him in his ministry; for others, his story will be a meeting with him, his life, his ministry…a reminder of his rich spirituality as a committed capuchin priest and sought after confessor full of zeal.

Fr. Egidio Picucci, the author of the biography, is well equipped to fulfill his task. He is well known for his keen and rich writing skills in works such as this one; he had other opportunities to get close to the life of this capuchin friar. Though he had not known the Servant of God personally, he reports in a lively fashion the stories and impressions of those who, having lived with him, "have been fellow citizens of the saints" and have walked for a while with him. No wonder then that such deep feelings and admiration transpire in the chain of memories, places and episodes he narrates.

In presenting the life of Fr. Damiano, from his birth to the death, Fr. Egidio starts off from episodes, anecdotes and easy-to-read sayings ("Too early to go to heaven", "I like it this way", "Wind on the sail"…) and loves to introduce and enlighten some aspects and characteristics of the Servant of God. He vividly stresses such aspects using a style so fluent that it makes the reading not only interesting, but also pleasant and enjoyable. His elegant and fast paced style, however, makes the reader feel the need to discover and deepen those other aspects of the life of the Servant of God that inevitably might have been overshadowed or just lightly mentioned.

Father Damiano of Cingoli, an original and useful complementary piece by Msgr. Odo Fusi Pecci, Bishop emeritus of Senigallia and originally from Cingoli, has been cleverly added to this volume. Msgr. Odo Fusi Pecci draws a parallel between the life of Father Damiano and the one of Saint John Vianney; he writes: "Father Damiano is very different but also so much alike Saint John Vianney…" He not only states this, but proves it as well, though in a brief way.

I think it is my duty, as vice-postulator of this cause, to express my personal gratitude and the gratitude of all friends and devotees of Father Damiano, to Father Egidio Picucci for his precious work. It will help us to better know the life of Father Damiano, a capuchin priest, a unique individual with great human and spiritual attraction.

This short and folksy biography then is most welcome! Our wish is that it might spread among the people, enter into families, especially in the areas of Cingoli, Macerata, Fermo, Santa Vittoria in M. and Fossombrone, some of the places where the Servant of God has lived for longer periods of time. This way, he will be better known, prayed to and invoked.

Father Damiano was generous and full of charity toward everyone while here on earth, now, in heaven, next to God’s throne. He will assist those who call for his help and protection with greater love and gratitude. His glorification here on earth will be for the praise and glory of God and the Church, while for us Capuchins it would become a point of reference to cast away the temptation of what is insubstantial and superficial to reach the true value of human and Christian life: sanctity!

Loreto, 19, 03, 2002, Feast of Saint Joseph

Fr. Antonio Angelini

Vice-Postulator

"TOO EARLY TO GO TO HEAVEN"

In a small room of the infirmary, a young capuchin student, Friar Bernardo Gabrielli of Offida, was delirious. The fever allowed him to reflect and feel sorry for the decision of the doctors who, having imposed on him to interrupt his studies in the convent of Fermo, were convinced that it would have been better for him to prepare for God’s exam rather than for the one of men.

He was twenty-five. The pleural-lung infection (which at that time was unforgiving) justified why he had been hurriedly transported to Macerata to be among sick people who were already in their sixties. The one responsible for the infirmary, though, had a few doubts about the diagnosis of the doctor from Fermo. So he called in the doctor of the convent, convinced that a more attentive visit and a more accurate exam would have brought more hope.

It didn’t take too long for the doctor to come. The doctor limited himself to reading the diagnosis of the colleague from Fermo. He asked a few general questions about the patient who was in deep pain. He asked about his fever. He then left immediately, having told the religious to prepare themselves for the worst, because – he declared – "it’s impossible that a debilitated body such as this can overcome the sickness."

As soon as the doctor had left the room, one of the recovering patients in the same infirmary, a man in his sixties, entered Friar Bernardo’s room. He was small and extremely frail (his beard must have weighed more than his entire body). He balanced his limping with a cane taller than him, and kept himself company with a worn-out rosary.

"So, you’d like to go to heaven? Too soon, too soon! You still have work to do, and lots of it!"

The old man’s words seemed like precious rain on a dry and slow autumn day, and moved Friar Bernardo. Eyes red with fever, the friar stared at the old man, smiling amiably. He was convinced the old man was there to give him the encouragement that the doctors and his sickness had by now taken away from him.

"I have never seen that little, physically-insignificant friar," he wrote later on, "but he entered into my room, and then into my life, like an old acquaintance, and spoke with reassuring confidence."

Though unknown to Friar Bernardo, the ‘little friar’ was known to the other religious among whom he enjoyed the reputation of a saint. Unfortunately, not everyone shared the same opinion, but this was in his favor, because history is full of saints ignored in their own house (Jesus included since his life was threatened in Nazareth), who win a rematch after death, forcing the unbelievers to testify in their favor in front of the church tribunal once their case of beatification is started.

Who was the little friar?

It was Fr. Damiano of Cingoli. Some considered him a ‘dreamer’ and had too many reservations about him, asking if people like him were useful to humanity, or had to be fought for that energy of life that dreams seem to favor. He had arrived at the infirmary of the Capuchin Fathers in Macerata, after a life that has to be told from the beginning because it is rich of teachings, edifying episodes, and miracles that won him the popular canonization. Those who knew all this, thought fitting to reflect on the strange words addressed to the patient and ventured to suggest the visit by another doctor, the director of the provincial dispensary.

This doctor, more diligent than the others, carefully examined the very young patient and prescribed a series of medication. In less than a week the young man was up again and full of energy, so much so that, after a short period of recovery, he resumed his studies. Friar Bernardo, speaking about what had happened, said: "The medicines were fine, but I’m convinced that my healing came because of Father Damiano who came to my room to recite the rosary with me and for me."

Those against the ‘dreamer’ got what they deserved. Despite the realism which expects everyone to keep their feet on the ground, those who walk with their heads in the clouds are often the only ones to be right later on.

Father Damiano didn’t limit himself to prayer, as is customary with saints, but he placed on his shoulders Friar Bernardo’s cross. Just a few months before his death, he told Friar Camillo Gattafoni in Macerata that he had offered himself as a victim to God instead of Friar Bernardo. "He’s so young!" he said.

God accepted his offering and called him to Himself after seven months, worn out not by age (he was only 61), but by a series of sicknesses coming from his longing to unite himself to the One he had always loved and served.

A LIFE MARKED BY POPES

Damiano Sfascia was born in the Pianmartino neighborhood of Villa Strada –Cingoli – on May 6, 1875, three years before the death of Pius IX. His father was a woodcutter whose character had more in common with the tough trees he was cutting than with his name, Pacifico. His rough personality was a burden to the family, especially to Angela, his wife, who was busy raising four children, taking care of the different chores, and working in the fields, as it was customary of all mothers at that time, when no one talked about women’s unemployment.

The family was so poor that they lacked farming tools, and had to be satisfied with a small garden, a chicken coop, and finding work in someone else’s fields. Pacifico proudly despised his situation and vented his anger against the trunk of the oak trees planted with no geometrical design along the creeks which, having run breathlessly among the olive groves Pius VIII had planted, mixed (and still mix) their waters into the Musone river.

Tired of his condition, Pacifico decided to leave for Argentina, convinced that ‘the other world’ would be better than the one he was leaving. Instead he found it the same and came back almost immediately, griping that not even there could he find the justice he was looking for.

Pianmartino was a bunch of houses next to a small village and it was unthinkable to find there any public structures, including a school. So, on March 3, 1891, when he was 16 and asked to join the Capuchins to be – as he said – "a penitential friar of penance", Damiano asked to be welcomed among the friars non-priests. The superiors, however, decided to make him study for the priesthood and he obeyed, accepting a crash course at the school of his own pastor, Fr. Raffaele Perugini, a holy man who led him into the study of some Latin, a must for those who aspire to be at the altar.

Damiano’s formation to the priesthood was certainly a rush against time since the following year –1892 – he entered the Novitiate in Camerino, keeping his baptismal name, something unusual at that time; he was then ordained priest by Archbishop Roberto Papiri on June 4, 1898 in Fermo, in the chapel of the archbishop’s house.

The year before (accept this reference to the Popes in the life of a man who loved the Church as a Mother) Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII, had been ordained priest.

Father Damiano spent the years between the novitiate and the priesthood in Trieste; there he made his first profession on October 24, 1896, and studied philosophy in the convent the Marche region had in that city. This was before the First World War made the Veneto area a meeting place of tragic military operations intended, as it was said, to re-establish the borders that had been violated.

He studied theology and completed his studies in Fermo on June 21, 1900, four months before Pope Leo XIII (another Pope!) published the encyclical Tametsi futrura, a stupendous mystical treatise describing how all that is done on earth can find its explanation in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ.

That encyclical was fitting because the years of Father Damiano’s youth coincided with the "tumultuous eruption of atheism" denounced by the Pontiff and which can be summarized in laicism, the spirit’s attitude which denies, in theory and practice, faith and all that derives from it. A few years later, Pius XI described it as "a pest of our times where we can find, at their worst, all errors".

It’s not easy to establish how all this influenced all the convents where Fr. Damiano completed his formation; however, it’s safe to say that, even though some of it reached them, so much so that some had to pay for it (like Fr. Fedele of St. Vittoria and Fr. Alfonso of Monsanmartino, Fr. Damiano’s instructors to whom he was always very close), Fr. Damiano didn’t bother much, because, like all saints, he was convinced that the world can only be renewed by changing ourselves.

Another reason for his apparent lack of interest for the events and discoveries of the time (wireless telegraphy, cinematography, the automobile, the airplane, etc. were invented in those years) has to be found in the decision he took once he felt not to be fit for the apostolate from the pulpit, but to the hidden one of spiritual direction and confession. He focused all his interest to the study of moral theology and ascetic, disciplines closer to what he started doing and would have continued to do, aware that time and grace should not be wasted, since they are God’s greatest gifts.

I LIKE IT THIS WAY

The reason for his frequent long journeys is that itinerant religious were more in demand at that time than they are today, and also because he wanted to. He made two unusual requests, one to the Provincial Minister and the other to the Guardians of the convents that welcomed him: he let the first know that he was available for the convents "where no one wanted to go", and told the second not to forget to entrust him "the most difficult places".

His requests were granted and in less than thirty years he lived in ten convents of the region, always reaching them on foot, often leaving traces of blood on the stones and thorn bushes. At first he wore sandals, but having taken seriously the joke of a confrere who pointed out to him that the money spent on sandals was greater than the one spent on public transportation, he chose to walk barefooted.

He also walked barefoot in Pianmartino, where he trained himself to penance carried on even at night, sleeping on top of two bricks hidden under the bed sheets and scourging his shoulders until he bled.

His penances are astonishing and don’t invite us so much so as to imitate him but to admire him. To him they were right and natural, only because Christ had chosen a life of suffering and poverty. "I was thinking of you in my agony; I have shed some drops of my blood for you. Let yourself be guided by my laws," moans the Savior in Mystery of Jesus by Pascal.

Father Damiano, of course, didn’t know those words by the French thinker, but he knew the ones of Jesus.

They were enough. They made him an icon of God despite the tattered habit, the face different from the standards of human beauty, his body a little broken, but he had the deep and lively eyes of someone accustomed to gaze into the depths of heaven.

In every parish he went to, he wouldn’t indulge in any rest, but he would lock himself in the confessional or stay up in prayer and do penance. He would lead the same life in convent, where he would spend the few hours of sleep laying on boards or sleeping outside.

One day, Father Pietro of Montegiorgio asked him for a couple of wooden boards to make a shelf: he knew where they were but he wanted to spare him the penance he was doing for years.

"Be patient, but I need them now," answered rather tactfully the other who totally despised the tempting comforts of the bed.

On another occasion, someone played an unusual trick on him. Having seen him come back from ministry to a far-away parish, some confreres stealthily followed him to his room, and as soon as they saw him laying down on his bed, they started singing "Libera, me Domine…" the responsorial once sung at funeral Masses.

Father Damiano, touching his coarse beard and shrugging his shoulders to show them he was still alive, muttered:

‘water from the pot’ because he’d take it from the nearest cooking pot), he answered that he had not been able to drink it as much as he wanted to, and sometimes he had also been sick because of it. Then he added: "Jesus was offered vinegar on the cross, something worse than water, so, let me do at least this."

He would then close himself in his room or take refuge in the garden, attracted by the beauty and fragrance of the trees, especially during fall.

"THIS GUY WILL DIE A SAINT"

Father Damiano’s life is filled with examples of acts of sacrifice and we can only mention a few. The austerity, which characterized his entire life and would have defeated a soldier or exhausted a pilgrim, had gradually become second nature to him. Accustomed to hard work since his childhood, a handy man for the bricklayers, he used it to provide the blade of his soul an extremely resistant sheath; he forged himself as a spiritually and physically strong man, though he appeared weak: he had no weaknesses, distractions, or sudden exhaustions.

Once, Don Leopoldo Giardini, an amusing pastor in the countryside of Fermo, reminded Father Damiano an interesting episode that happened in Porto St. Giorgio. "Father Damiano," he said smiling, "do you remember the time we were together at the Porto? I preached and you heard confessions; I ate and you made penance."

Father Damiano nodded lightly but didn’t say anything.

Everyone knew that he ate what was indispensable to survive, systematically refusing meat and wine. When meat was served at table in any rectory, he would politely peek into the kitchen and say, "You know what I will have, right?" A good size dish of cooked vegetables would then be served him. "If he could not do this," wrote Father Bernardo Gabrielli, "he would joke about something or tell an interesting story so as to avoid eating meat or drinking wine."

Often, he would bring the ladies helping out in the rectories the vegetables he wanted them to cook for him and which had been given him by some farmers or he himself had picked along the slopes touched by the wind and caressed by brooks.

The pastor of Curetta of Servigliano saw him reach his house on a hot summer afternoon almost exhausted. Convinced that he had not yet eaten, the pastor asked that two eggs be prepared for him. "No thanks, Father Angelo. One is enough," he beseeched with the little voice left in him.

When he was in the convent alone (which was rather often, especially at St. Vittoria in Matenano, where his only company were the waters and the stars) he would do even worse. He would mix soup and ashes, and when someone caught him in the act, he answered, "It’s all right. Man doesn’t do what he doesn’t want to do."

When the chaplain of the cemetery in Fermo died, many people asked that Father Damiano take his place, because of his kindness, availability, and most of all because of his ability to comfort people in particularly painful moments. The superior denied the request explaining that, "If Father Damiano already does a lot of penance in the convent, under the watchful eye of the superior who slows him down and balances his desires with his authority, what would he do if he were left alone and free?"

What is most striking though is not his penance, but the joy he had in doing it. Many are those who suffer, but very few are those who can let their light shine through their pain. A dark face spoils ethics and ascetic as well. Father Damiano belongs to the very few penitents who reflect real happiness. In Father Damiano this happiness was also evident in his funny one-liners using sloppy Latin which would bring smiles, relax tense situations, solve embarrassing situations, or invite to reflect.

If he saw someone show off eye-catching and expensive jewelry, he would point in the direction of the cemetery and say, "Sed non portabis illuc" (You’ll be buried without them). To those who pointed out that his lifestyle was the best way to get some sort of sickness, he answered, "Ego scio, ego scio, I know it, I know it."

But he wouldn’t change.

Once, in Cingoli, he braved the snow to run and help the sisters in the convent of St. Sperandia. Sister Rosaria Zenobi tells us the story. "One year, because of heavy snowfall, we remained isolated in the monastery. After three days, when we had lost all hope someone could come to visit us, we heard someone ring the doorbell: it was Father Damiano.

He had come from the convent of the capuchin fathers because he felt sorry for us who had not had Mass nor received communion for three days. He also thought we might need some help.

When he arrived, he was wet because of the snow and the effort. Mother abbess asked him to come into the monastery and go through the cloister instead of reaching the church from the outside.

As he went through the kitchen, he passed by a lit fire, but he didn’t stop to warm himself up or dry his clothes. Instead, he went straight to celebrate the Mass still wet and tired.

At the end of the Mass, happy of the act of charity he had done, he went back to the convent leaving us moved to tears".

Sister Maria Rosaria tells us another story. "On another occasion, he walked from St. Vittoria to Cingoli. Being very devout of St. Sperandia, he wanted to make a pilgrimage to the burial place of the saint. He went on foot and fasted, spending the night outdoor under a tree. When he arrived, he spent hours and hours kneeling in front of the saint’s casket without lifting the veil that covered the relics. When we asked him the reasons for not looking at the saint, he just smiled and said that St. Sperandia knew and saw that he was there. She also knew that he was aware of her seeing him, so, there was no need for anything else."

He wanted to undergo three operations fully awake. The doctor, having to remove a tumor from the right side of his neck, insisted on giving him anesthesia, but he refused. He just laid on the bed and said: "I’m ready, you go ahead and cut, I won’t move." Remember, he couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

What others considered unthinkable was natural to him: going on foot, stopping along the road to talk to farmers, hearing confessions on the side of the road, falling on the ground exhausted, drinking from a spring coming down from the mountain, kneeling down with a penitent blasphemer to teach him how to ask forgiveness (he was rigorous with blasphemers and those who would not go to church on Sundays), taking a load of firewood from the shoulders of a woman and placing it on his own; these were natural things to do for him (and so unusual to others), and people followed him as a living legend.

The moving episode of the blasphemer has to be told in its entirety because of its beauty.

One day, Father Damiano was walking in the countryside when he heard someone blaspheme. The words sounded like a thunder in the sky to Father Damiano, and he felt as if someone had slapped him on the face. Having regained control of himself right away, he took off his sandals and ran toward the man forcing him to stop with his arms stretched wide open. The man stopped and Father Damiano, pointing his finger against him and bellowed, "God should not be offended! Get down on your knees and ask him for forgiveness."

After a brief moment of hesitation, the man knelt down next to the friar, asked God’s forgiveness, and got up at peace. Then Father Damiano realized that the sky was clear and saw swallows flying in the air.

Everyone felt the need to be better people next to a man who only wanted to save souls, freeing them from the cold grasp of Satan. Some didn’t accept him; others considered him a simpleton, a naïve person to be pitied; others thought he liked to show off or was someone who despised all affections, a thousand miles far from that Jesus who showed more tenderness than roughness.

Yet, there were others who saw in him the presence of the Holy Spirit, who blows where he wills, just like a storm. The most important thing is to be able to recognize him and love him in his rough reality.

Humble people could recognize God’s presence in Father Damiano; they would not ask deep questions like learned people, but they saw him in the right light and showed a natural wonder. We can see in his life the same spirit of the Fioretti francescani, even though he didn’t write a book. Therefore, answering to those who had a different opinion, common people would say: "This guy will die a saint!"

Even though the world "praises those who can fake virtue," as the poet Leopardi used to say, someone goes against the flow, sees what is right and discovers the pearl hidden in the field.

THE WIND ON THE SAIL

Born under the protection of a saint, Father Damiano had to reach the same goal. He was given that name because his mother, experiencing some problems during labor, entrusted him to one of the two oriental doctors saints (Cosma and Damian), called "anargiri" because they took care of sick people freely.

As soon as she did that, her problems disappeared. Those problems must have been serious since it was decided that the boy be baptized right away and the ceremony be finalized at the church later on.

Thanks to an insight the Holy Spirit usually gives to some chosen people, Damiano soon understood the value of suffering and chose it in ways unusual for his age. When his mother Angela would get up during the night to check her children in their sleep, cover them, close or open the window according to the weather, she would often find Damiano not in bed, but laying near the door on the floor, using a brick for a pillow.

One time, one of his aunties scolded him because his actions worried his mother and ruined his health. Father Damiano answered: "Leave me alone. You don’t know how much we have to suffer if Jesus went through so much."

Since his childhood, Father Damiano understood the experience of the cross as happening and not just a memory. He didn’t think of it only as something that happened, but he felt it had something to do with him: Christ suffers because of me. The object of every Christian experience of the cross doesn’t consist simply in practicing compassion, but it has to reach a point in which we identify with it. Just like it happened to many other saints, Father Damiano arrived at a stage in which he wasn’t only reading Christ’s passion, but he was reliving it in his own life.

Only in this light can we understand his choice to walk always on foot and barefoot, to give up a refreshing cup of water, to abstain from meat and wine, to always choose the last place. Since his first days in the convent, he gave up the moments of rest and the few opportunities to relax, keeping busy with work in the garden, in the cellar, or in church, anxious to get better vegetables, fix a door, or decorate the altar that he liked always in order and clean. Once, as a priest, he threatened not to celebrate the Mass if they didn’t allow him to replace an altar cloth filthy with wax and wine.

In 1895, when he went for a medical check up in the army at Udine, he had to undergo a hernia operation and chose to do it without anesthesia. He did the same thing when he had to remove a growth on his jaw; he explained that Jesus on the cross didn’t want the anesthesia reserved to those condemned to die.

When he was in Fermo with Friar Marcellino of Capradosso and Friar Giuseppe of Rapagnano, he competed with both of them in penances and prayer, exhorting each other "to do without talking", taking no notice of the smiles of those around them whose skepticism then turned into admiration: people still talk about them and credit them for a renewal of "the true capuchin spirit".

Though demanding with himself, he was extremely attentive to the needs of others, both in the convent and outside. In St. Vittoria, he was tired of seeing people coming to church soiled with mud or dust, so he paved with stones a shortcut to town all by himself, stone after stone. He also helped the farmers to improve their houses, bring electricity to their homes, and channel spring waters. He used a spade and hoe to help the women whose husbands who had gone to war. He wrote and read the letters women would exchange with their husbands at the front. For years he helped a mother feed a handicapped child. He brought medicine and candy to the elderly and the sick. A lady kept for years a bottle of oil she had received from him after she had expressed her great desire for it.

He would teach a prayer, show the beauty of faith and the greatness of the Christian mystery. He would remind people of a passage from catechism. He would join those reciting the rosary, kneeling at the door, and expressing words of comfort. "Have courage and go on," he said to a woman with a large family, "if you keep on going, you will make it. The ticket to paradise is assured."

In Cingoli, he was instrumental in bringing electricity all the way to the famous Piazza Padella by visiting, always on foot, the competent offices in Falconara and St. Severino Marche. In the convent he dressed in overalls, covered with sweat, mud, and dust, actively helping to dig the well next to the external walls.

During the two months of military service he served in 1918, first in Brescia and then Ancona, he undertook the most difficult and humble services, despite the jokes of those who considered him good-for-nothing. This included the captain who kept on humiliating him just because he was a friar.

In St. Pietro Morico, he helped two brothers who were anguishing over the imminent failure of their wool factory. He arrived when things seemed desperate. He understood that the real problem was the disagreement between the two of them, so he helped them make up. He blessed their factory and work resumed immediately. The first cloth that came out of the factory was for him, cloth for a new habit. He accepted the gift and had the cloth made into a habit too, but he never wore it.

Wherever he stayed, Macerata, Cagli, Fossombrone, Cingoli, Jesi, and so on, he left act of kindness, mercy, courtesy, or even a drop of blood on the stones, or jubilation…. evident signs of the Spirit blowing on his sail.

GREAT DOCTOR OF SOULS

Sanctity is a spiritual, interior experience, present mostly between God and the soul. What appears outside is never the whole picture: there is another side, immense and uncontrollable, made up of possibilities and surprises, which cannot be adequately described. There is an area whose borders our human heart and mind cannot cross with the instruments of scientific criticism or historic deduction. That place can only be reached with the abandonment of fantasy and the challenge of prayer.

Therefore, it’s not easy to speak of the specific and most hidden aspect of Father Damiano’s apostolate. It seems he chose this style of ministry out of his inability to expose himself to the public through preaching, but more precisely, because it allowed him to better transmit to souls the passion for sanctity.

"He was a great doctor of souls," wrote Doctor Pierluigi Perri, who was brought back on the road of truth by Father Damiano, "with quick intuition he would decide on the diagnosis, used kindness to attract, guided with simplicity, convinced with his example. He would always be benevolent and forgiving toward the penitents, welcoming them with a friendly expression and encouraging words."

He would always act this way. We have to forcefully stress that ‘always’, because he never said to anyone: "Please, wait, I don’t have time now." He was convinced that each soul is beautiful and holy because God loves it, and God does not love the soul only when it is beautiful and holy. Any soul was important, whether it was the one of a laundry lady of Fossombrone, the mailman of St. Ippolito, or the one of Alberto del Fante, the Mason converted by Father Damiano who later wrote his first biography. Father Damiano met him on the train, on his way back to Fermo. He became his confidant, confessor, and spiritual director. For several years, every two weeks, he would arrive at the convent of Macerata for a day of retreat with him, using Fr. Damiano’s sweetness to mitigate Fr. Pio’s strictness.

Del Fante introduced him to Doctor Giorgio Festa, the doctor entrusted to check Fr. Pio’s stigmata. He became Fr. Damiano’s penitent and was devoted to him.

"If he died as a saint," wrote Egle Paoloni Caferri, "it’s because he was always ready to hear confessions and used all possible means to invite people to go to confession." At Easter time he would come up with all sorts of ways to convince men to go to confession. Anxious to see them reconciled with God, he would go and look for them in the factories, in stores, and in the fields. "All souls," he would say, "need to return to the one who created them. Let us pray that this may happen. There are many fish to catch; one leads the other. Let us pray."

When he returned the watches he used to fix and people would ask him how much they had to pay, he would answer:

everything, even breakfast or lunch, and close himself in the confessional box. He would often come out of there unconscious because he was fatigued and had not eaten.

To Father Damiano, leaving a meal to go and hear confessions was the natural consequence of what he did every morning at the altar. The Eucharist would be incomplete if lived in idleness; instead, it calls to service. In the upper room, Jesus completed the Eucharist by washing the disciples’ feet. Father Damiano would complete the sacrament by dedicating all his energies to the service of souls, convinced that this was the way to serve and be united with the One he wanted to join forever.

Medusa Capodagli of Fosombrone wrote, "I was 17 when I went to him for confession the first time. I was very impressed by his kindness which flowed from God. He invited me to make of goodness, and only goodness, the exclusive program of my life. There were many other capuchin fathers, some noteworthy too, but he was the saint. He was the sought-after confessor. In Fossombrone, he would hear confessions in the cathedral. More than once, while walking to the church, he would notice women sitting idly in the sun, and say, "My name is friar Sfascia and I hear confessions in the cathedral every day. I’ll wait for you. Few would disregard his invitation."

In Fossombrone, he would make himself available to hear the confessions of the women who worked in the weaving factories. Most of them would go to him early in the morning, or from one thirty in the afternoon to six o’clock in the evening. At that time, in winter, it was pitch dark, but he was always there. They would go willingly, attracted not by his looks, which would not really encourage listening to him, but by his gentleness, his kindness, and his compassion. These were rare qualities, hard to find in someone else. If people could not find him in church, they would go up to the convent, despite the steep climb."

Because of him, one of the many saints who had lived in that convent, the knoll where the convent was, had become a beam of light.

Paolo Valentini’s witness shows an understandable human excitement. As a good- looking young man, party lover, and priest hater, he would never give up a dance party. On one occasion, stirred by the unprincipled lifestyle of his friends, he even vowed to kill the local parish priest.

He didn’t carry out his threat only because of a friend and a warning by the priest himself: "Paolo, if you listen to my words, you are better than I who spoke them to you."

After failing several resolutions to change his life, including the one made in the trenches of Bainsizza, he finally meets Father Damiano and said, "I’ve found the one who can save me."

The sudden birth of faith is a wonderful mystery!

Paolo says: "After my first confession, three years of spiritual delight followed, especially because he told me that in about six months the devil would not have been in charge of my soul any longer. And it happened just like that.

To encourage me to leave sin, he would talk to me about a penitent who had committed all sorts of sins but repented and had become a committed Christian. The saints made it, he would say, why can’t we?

After many years, Paolo would talk about Father Damiano with the excitement and admiration of the first encounter. He lived such an ideal life that his daughter Elvira wrote, "How wonderful to have had a dad like him! The greatest virtues I admired in him were faith and steadfastness. He would do everything without fear, even if he knew people would laugh at him."

What would Father Damiano say to those who went to him for confession? "He would say few and simple words," wrote Father Bernanrdo Gabrielli, "but he enjoyed such respect from people, that every word of his was accepted with great devotion. Besides, he knew how to give confidence. It was easy to open one’s heart to him, because he would understand the most delicate situations and find the right words at the right time."

His simple way of talking (didn’t Jesus use the patois of Canaan, the dialect of Canaan?) was meant to underscore that discouragement could not prevail over hope, nor could complaining replace the joy of getting closer to God. The novelty of his few words was in the silence it created in the souls who heard them.

No wonder then that so many people would crowd in front of his confessional, just like at a fair, said a woman. It comes as no surprise that either people would come from far away to visit him at the infirmary, or the inmates from the Fossombrone jail would ask for him, or people would accept to go to confession only with him, even on their death bed.

In Sant’Elpidiuccio of Montelparo, a farmer, invited by his family to receive the last rites, said that he agreed only if given by Father Damiano. Having been told about this, Father Damiano rushed on foot to hear the dying man’s confession, saving a soul which seemed already lost. It wasn’t the first time that Father Damiano won a game in the last inning.

At other times he was informed by supernatural voices.

In Fossombrone he had been assisting a 28 year old woman, afflicted by tuberculosis and tested by a series of family misfortunes: the death of her father and brother, financial crisis and loss of job. On November 12, 1928, writes Medusa Capodagli, at an unusual hour, Father Damiano reached the house of the sick woman to hear her confession and comfort her. Nobody called him because there had not been any sign indicating a worsening of the situation.

Having heard her confession, he left. He had not yet crossed the bridge on the Metauro when everyone heard of the sick person’s death. Father Damiano must have had a mysterious warning about my friend’s closeness to death.

The patient’s brother was so moved that he too decided to go to confession."

Speaking of Father Damiano as a confessor, it is natural to look at what was happening in those years with St. Leopoldo Mandic in Padova, and St. Pio of Petralcina in St. Giovannin Rotondo, both of them capuchin friars just like Father Damiano. Father Damiano didn’t have big crowds at his confessional like them, but he had the same sanctity serving the least, as any caring servant of the people of God.

This kind of servant walks with the people, aware that his duty is to speed their journey and impress upon them a longing for the future. This is a servant careful not to irritate, but also courageous in pointing out the open and hidden vices of rich and poor alike. He saw in each one the dignity of the human person. He recognized the profound equality among people and respected the characteristics of their diversity.

"IF SHE IS CELESTE, LET HER GO TO HEAVEN"

Speaking of Father Damiano as a confessor, it would be too naïve to consider him a man only apt to convert sinners accustomed to evil; to invite people who had not gone to confession for a long time to approach the sacrament of reconciliation; to help those who looked for him to tell him their pains and needing comfort find the straight path. To those who know his life and spirit well, this is only a minor aspect. Most of all, he was a master of souls. The light coming out of his rough hands used to hard work seemed hidden and feeble, yet, like all ascetic figures, he would direct it to the souls, getting them closer to the spring, changing their stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

Knowing Jesus (just like Gemma Galgani, he could say that "he was born for Him") meant he had to let others meet Him, even those who didn’t understand him, but slowly, with his kind insistence, wanted to know him. To him this was enough, because in the desire to know God we not only become immune to evil (desire is like a medicine, and this medicine is not the goal, but a kind of help), but most of all we find the decisive push toward virtue, not imposed, but suggested, raised, educated.

"To him confession," wrote Medusa Capodagli, "more than listening and receiving people’s sins, was an occasion to animate and awaken, to lead to a better life. While for the penitent it was the moment to welcome an encouragement or a suggestion that renews hope and confidence." He would do this with a voice as sweet as a tuned harp, yet challenging like the self-reproach that sticks to the person’s conscience.

"The soil of your soul is ready," he once said to a lady in Fermo, showing an intelligence kept sharp by contemplation, "what do you resolve to do? On the way to perfection we can’t walk leisurely, but have to run without getting tired. I ask you one thing: be always happy without being ever satisfied. You know what I mean, don’t you?"

"I understand." the woman answered. And she showed, through her life, that she had grasped the strength of the allusion in his words.

Another person, who understood well what he talked about, was a girl of St. Vittoria, the city where Father Damiano spent many years of his religious life. On St. Valentine’s Day he went into the confessional early in the morning and came out only at noon to celebrate the Mass. To his great surprise, the pillow on the confessional seat had stuck to his habit and he wasn’t able to get it off. At first, those who were there seemed amused to see him awkward and visibly irritated, but then they pitied him. The girl’s boyfriend, convinced that she had entered the monastery because of the friar’s suggestion, had taken his revenge by spreading heavy-duty glue on the pillow.

Nobody complained when another of his penitents, Domenico Biondi of Rapagnano, entered the convent despite the objections of his relatives. Later on Father Damiano lived with Domenico – who had by then become Friar Giuseppe of Rapagnano – in the convent of Fermo, together with the Servant of God Friar Marcellino of Capradosso, competing with both of them on shunning comfort and honors, and considered their arms too heavy, just like the ones of Saul, to defeat Goliath.

Though demanding, reaping fruits and sleeping very little in order to bring about the Kingdom of God in souls, he wasn’t disrespectful. "Our conversations," said Pierluigi Perri, "weren’t boring at all. We dealt with topics of spiritual life, morality, and touched upon the beauty of creation, the wonders of nature, the qualities of flowers and grass, and the goodness of people".

He would also use strong words, but only with people he thought could understand them. "The Lord gives you a lot of graces, but you don’t want to accept them," he once said to a woman who would not decide to change her life. When she answered that she had good intentions, Father Damiano said: "Maybe you do, but it’s like offering a piece of bread to a poor man without ever putting it into his hands."

He would give counsel with foresight. A rather beautiful young woman who lived a comfortable life kept on telling him that she wanted to become a sister, but he never seemed to pay her much attention. Finally, one day, almost inspired, he said: "You can go, but remember that the sisters will abuse you and the friars will look down on you. So, if you feel like it, you can go; otherwise stay home".

The girl had made up her mind and left, but soon it happened just like Father Damiano had said. Mother superior was suspicious of her and didn’t want to admit her. When Father Damiano heard about this, he ran to the convent and challenged the superior who answered with pride. "You have the year of the novitiate and it is unfair to send her away like this; if it doesn’t work, you can decide later," the friar cut short the conversation.

After some time the little friar went back to the convent to inquire about the young lady. "Father Damiano," mother superior told him with a big smile, "I’ve met many good girls, but none like her."

He didn’t need to hear confessions to understand the state of souls: sometimes, a look was enough. "As he met one of the sisters," Sister Maria Rosaria Zenobi tells us, "he stopped the work he was doing there in the monastery and followed her with his eyes and commented that she would have made much progress if she had met a good spiritual director; otherwise she would have suffered and given much trouble with that passive personality.

What happened later seemed to prove him right. In fact, that young sister Maria Teresa had a unique spiritual experience.

"I had a similar experience. One day, grasping my wrists, he told me I could not do the same chores the other sisters did because I was weaker than them. Of course I said it wasn’t true and that I could do as much as anyone else. But he insisted and pointed out that I should not wear that instrument of penance, nor do penance with that piece of steel with sharp edges or the rope.

I wanted to insist, but he cut me short saying that he would have brought something appropriate for me to use. In fact, a few days later, he had me called to the parlor and he gave it to me. And I kept it as his dearest memento.

In 1920, the Spaniard, an epidemic that claimed thousand of victims all over Italy, arrived in Cingoli. I got sick too and everyone feared for me, especially because the doctor had said that there was no hope. I was 19 and an understandable sadness spread in the convent. One evening, Father Damiano arrives at the convent and asks about me. ‘Don’t worry. Maria Rosaria will not die. Let her drink two sips of water and she’ll recover.’ Though I had not been able to swallow anything for some time, I managed to gulp down those two sips Father Damiano had suggested and I recovered immediately.

A few months later he came back and was asked to pray for Sister Alma Celeste (Celeste, in Italian, can also mean celestial-heavenly) who was seriously ill. Father Damiano said, ‘If she is Celeste, let her go to heaven.’ And that sister died within ten days."

A woman of Sorbolongo (a small village near Fossombrone) was gravely ill and the doctors prescribed an expensive medicine. Since she didn’t have the money, she intended to ask Father Damiano’s help and headed toward the convent. As she was crossing the railroad tracks, she thought of ending her life by getting under the next train, but she overcame that thought with the great desire she had of meeting the friar everyone considered a saint.

He spoke to her calmly, inviting her to put her trust in God and Blessed Benedetto; he blessed her and sent her on her way comforted and …hungry. Once she arrived home, she ate so much bread she felt full. She hadn’t done that in three years, but she felt like doing it and she found her healing in eating that bread.

There are many other episodes that reveal his prophetic spirit, the fruit, many people thought, of his union with God. People didn’t wait for his death to call him saint. It can happen that, while the Church’s verdict can only come after death, sometimes the people of God claims for itself the rights it had to name bishops and declare saints those it held in great esteem.

Father Elia of Cupramontana (another true man of God) tells us that one day a telegram came, informing of the death of a friar’s mother. Father Damiano heard the message and said immediately, "What? Your mother is dead? No, don’t worry! Not only is she not dead, but she will live for a few more years."

When Father Fedele of Monterado, a noteworthy musician and a religious of great virtues, died in Jesi in 1927, Father Damiano gave the news to his confreres in real time. During their conversation, he became suddenly serious and said that at that very moment the good religious had died. When the official news arrived, everyone realized that it had happened the day and the hour Father Damiano had said.

Once, seeing off Paolo Valentini, the mailman he had brought back to God, he said:

"Come back soon or you’ll not see me again."

Even though we know the answer, it is natural to ask where such a balanced, prudent, and upright man, with qualities of extraordinary men, would find light, strength and prophetic intuitions. If someone had asked him the reason, he would have probably felt embarrassed, but nobody ever asked him because everyone knew that he spent the greater part of the day and night speaking with Jesus. His whole life was centered in God. In fact, the more we experience God, the more we feel the need to be in Him. It’s like love, the more you are loved, and the more you love. It is capital that grows by itself.

"Once," Father Eusebio of Cagli (another great saint) tells us, "I went to visit him in the infirmary in Macerata. Since I couldn’t find him anywhere, I was told to look in the chapel. As I opened the door, I saw him kneeling in front of the altar, arms raised, staring at the tabernacle, almost out of his body, unaware of the noise the door and my presence had made.

I called him, but he hardly moved and it took him some time to regain consciousness, just like someone waking up from deep sleep."

To know others is news, curiosity. It can be culture. To know Christ is life. It is having a vision and an answer to our destiny. Quem nosse vivere. Life is to know Him, his person, more than his doctrine. Someone said that real knowledge is well described by the French verb co-naitre that implies knowledge as being born again. The saints’ knowledge is true knowledge.

Other confreres say that Father Damiano, in front of the tabernacle, seemed to speak of things seen. "Don’t you see that beautiful Jesus? There, there, he’s there! He’s so good! He loves us so much!"

On a summer day, Father Provincial found him in church, covered in sweat and with a heavy breath, and asked him how he was doing. He answered:

Cingoli so excited about the Eucharist that everyone accepted one of his daring ideas: collect their golden objects and have them cast for the key of the tabernacle.

Since nobody can arrive at such intimacy with God unless through constant contemplation, we have to say that Father Damiano lived constantly for God and in God. Saint Bonaventura of Bagnoregio said the same thing a few centuries before when he stated that Christian wisdom consists of ecstatic raptures and not in static complacency. The mind needs to be constantly raised, and raised quickly, from the creatures to the Creator, from earth to heaven.

Father Damiano probably didn’t know Fr. Bonaventura’s text, but he had inherited its spirit.

And this is the most important aspect.

NEVER WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING AND ALWAYS IN HEAVEN

Speaking of Father Damiano’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin, authentic devotion because it had become imitation, we can use a Franciscan mystic that Father Damiano knew of, but whose writings he never read. Blessed Battista Varano of Camerino, 1458-1524, wrote many interesting works about her experience and the ascetic-mystical life.

Among her early works is a Novena to the Blessed Virgin, which is a little masterpiece. Her considerations can help us summarize Father Damiano’s life. Beginning from the Blessed Virgin’s humility and her silence while in the temple, Blessed Battista considers some moments of her life, saying that she was never without doing anything and always in Heaven, faithful to night prayer that she would leave with her face inundated by light.

With Jesus growing in her womb, her love and desire to adore this infant God was growing within her too, and the nine months waiting to breastfeed him seemed to her like billions of years.

Strengthened by the sweet Jesus, she overcame the painful period of Christmas and the flight to Egypt, when she fed only with bread and water at the few fountains she found, she found the whole heaven living with his sweet company in Nazareth. Oh queen of heaven - writes the Blessed Battista - what a joy would have been to see both of you sitting at a simple table, eating a few pieces of bread and drinking from a small pitcher of water!

When Jesus started his public ministry, Mary was deeply saddened by people calling her Son a deceiver, possessed by the devil, a drunkard, a blasphemer, and noticed the Jewish leaders’ attempts to put Him to death…We have to remember that she went through a great deal of pain and sufferings for us.

After the tragedy at Calvary, when her heart seemed split in two, Blessed Varano describes the apparition of the Risen Lord to his mother (an idea that we’ve discovered only recently!), the Ascension (she looked at Him so intently that she felt like being raised with her Son), and Pentecost (The Virgin had this desire more for the apostles and the disciples who had to come late, than for herself, because she was already filled by the Holy Spirit), and spent the last years of her life in all sorts of spiritual practices like prayer, meditation, and contemplation. Her place of prayer was like paradise, and her face brighter than the sun.

She – concludes the Blessed of Camerino – is the only refuge and comfort of the chosen ones…and would be ready to die for anyone if it was necessary.

If we compare these pages to the life of Father Damiano (forgive the daring synopsis!), we realize how he led his life following the model of the Blessed Virgin described by Blessed Battista.

"Never idle and always with her mind in heaven," writes the Franciscan. Father Damiano was a tireless worker, busy in the garden, in the convent, in the fields of the farmers, in the little workshop where he fixed watches and all sorts of tools, proving to be a competent and patient worker. He brought electricity and running water to the convents (he did the work by himself in St. Vittoria). In the monastery of St. Sperandia in Cingoli, wrote Sister Maria Rosaria Zenobi, "he carried out many projects in the church (the big skylight on the dome) and in the monastery itself (the wiring for electricity). During one summer he fixed the whole roof under a scorching sun, walking barefoot on the hot tiles, all by himself. He showed great humility and generosity unheard-of, never asking for nor accepting any refreshments. Sometimes, so as not to stop working, he wouldn’t even go down to eat nor would he come and eat with us. At noontime he said that he would eat later; in the evening he would say that he had to go back to the convent.

Once he spent a whole day decorating the church for the feast of St. Sperandia. His help took us out of trouble since our sacristan had been called into the army. The task required great skill and attention; Father Damiano was capable, hardworking, prudent, and did everything perfectly.

However, he always paid attention to the most important values first. He was fully aware of his priorities. God is first, then the rest; doing things differently would have been like eating the skin of a fruit and leaving what is within.

"When she left prayer, it seemed as if bright rays of light came out of her face," Blessed Battista writes about Mary. There are thousands of testimonies about Father Damiano’s recollection. "Waiting for people to go to confession, he would kneel behind the main altar with his face between his hands…coming out of his ecstasies and realizing that I was waiting for him," wrote a confrere, "he apologized and made himself available." Someone else said: "If I have to say what impressed me most about him, it’s his perseverance in prayer."

Without prayer even Father Damiano would have worked in vain, or given ‘a scorpion to those who asked for an egg’ and ‘a snake to those who asked for a fish’.

He would pray still, with reverence, moving to tears those who would look at him without being seen. His Mass had nothing exceptional and wasn’t even long. Yet, people had a feeling of assisting the Mass celebrated by a saint because of his recollection and the profound attitude of faith and humility that transpired in him. When he left the altar he seemed another person and so light that he didn’t seem to be touching the ground.

If it is true, like Barth used to say, that God has time for human beings, then human beings need to find time for God because this is the only way to achieve in a short time what wise human strategies cannot obtain.

"During the flight to Egypt, Mary nourished herself with bread and water at the few fountains she found on her way," Varano writes. Father Damiano was so poor that he was compared to Saint Francis. He wore sandals that seemed to be made for walking uncomfortably and with difficulty. He lived in a small, little furnished room with poor shades. He walked barefoot even during the coldest season. He only had two habits covered with sweat and the smell from the fields. He had one handkerchief which he divided in two. When he did the electric wiring in the monastery of St. Sperandia, he used canes to manufacture insulators, and pieces of wood tied together as a pair of scissors as switches. He used common wire to tie the electric wires to the insulator. Those of us who were helping him had to cut the wire as precisely as possible not to go against the spirit of poverty.

Were all these exaggerations? Maybe so, but they came from a sincere love for a typically Franciscan virtue that Father Damiano defended even to the point of raising his voice, something he would rarely do.

"He would only dare a polite observation," wrote Father Bernardo Gabrielli, "when the superior, according to him, would let go of things concerning poverty. He didn’t see only poetry in poverty, but he considered it as the only unmovable way of spiritual life for every son of the Poor of Assisi, the only barometer of capuchin spirituality."

"Her place of prayer was heaven…" Varano concludes in the Novena, speaking about Mary. In St. Vittoria Father Damiano opened an oratory for young people. There he had catechesis, prepared people to confession and listened to people who wanted to talk to him. "In this way," wrote a witness, "he was instrumental in bringing people back to the faith and forming more than one generation of Christians. The oratory remained like a lighthouse for many years."

The memory of the oratory (that reminds us of the "chapels" of St. Alhonse M. De Liguori in Naples) lasted a long time in St. Vittoria and brought sparks of new hope in the hearts of many youths who had come to consider Christ a foreigner, the Church a stranger, and the Gospel a few childish tales.

The oratory Varano speaks of is not made of stones but of flesh, and Father Damiano built this one too. From this kind of oratory came the devotion to the Marian shrines, especially the ones of Loreto (it’s the first place that he visited after being in the army) and of Lambro. There he nourished his prolonged prayer in front of the images of the Blessed Virgin. There originated the zeal he showed in celebrating Mary’s feasts. There was born the devotion of the fifteen Saturdays and the five Fridays to the Sorrowful Mother and to the month of May. There grew the fasting on Saturdays. There developed the use of Marian antiphons. There was the reason of his wake before the Coming and his absolute faithfulness to praying the Breviary and the rosary, often said kneeling and the eyes full of tears.

There was born the forgiveness he asked and received from a confrere who had opposed him in all things at all times, up to the point of questioning his integrity by filing a suit against him, an action that only the immediate action of the Provincial Superior was able to end as it began. Everything was born out of jealousy that Varano calls ‘the terrible beast, stained with blood, with a crest nobody can bring down’.

He would do the impossible to avoid leaving others into the shadows. He had so much respect and such profound charity toward others that he considered the feet of his confreres blessed even if they were not.

His refusal to believe in the malice of others was not the result of covering his eyes in front of the facts, but a refusal to judge. Something he feared because only God is judge and he didn’t want to have an evil heart. He chose to know through seeing rather than hearing because it doesn’t rely on intermediaries. He saw without looking. That’s why he didn’t judge.

Nobody worked as hard as him to bring back the devotion to the Blessed Virgin into the families by bringing images, rosaries, suggesting the use of intercessions, teaching songs, (because of his well intentioned sticking his nose into families, he was called Father nosy) and energetically opposing assumed apparitions that generated fanatic behavior and distracted from true devotion. He often invited people to ask Mary to intercede for them, just like he told one young confrere in crisis ("Look at Mary Immaculate, and your whole life will be clean and your death holy") and to the girls in the oratory of St. Vittoria: "Be kind and good and always devout to the Blessed Virgin. When you feel tempted or someone comes to bother you, pray to Mary; say three Hail Mary, even only mentally, and you will always win".

His simple and unassuming words would let everyone know where the fountain of true hope and trust was, and everyone could find comfort.

It was his devotion to the Blessed Virgin that made him see that he would have died close to one of the most important Marian feasts: in fact, he died on August 23, at the end of the eight days for the feast of the Assumption.

SHOWER OF GRACES

The joy reflected in this short account by Father Giuseppe Selandari, can be felt in each and every word: Father Damiano shines with a light which doesn’t look for recognition. Instead, it is simple and convincing like the life of Friar Leone, Friar Bernanrdo of Quintavalle, or Friar Ginepro, Friars of the times of Rivo Torto or of the Porziuncola, the times of Francis.

At times, the hagiographer (sit venia verbo!) gets discouraged when he lacks documentation covering certain areas of his research, compromising certain happenings and judgments. It can also happen that a whole series of documents on a certain event or a person reveals less of a person’s life than a single sentence coming from someone’s experience. Just like this witness wrote on a small piece of paper shining with grace. Sometimes, a lightning sheds enough light to see an entire area.

The wonderful happenings that people called miracles and that the hard work of Father Fulgenzo of Lapedona (he wrote the first biography of the Servant of God Friar Marcellino of Capradosso) collected in Macerata and Montegiorgio, sprang from a deep faith. We wonder what would have been the result if the research had covered other places (and would have been many!) where Father Damiano had lived.

Let’s be satisfied with what we have. In fact, when Amelia Foresi was asked to tell some miraculous event and didn’t know what to say, Father Damiano himself said that talking wasn’t necessary since the Blessed Virgin herself, who loved him, would have found a way to glorify him on earth.

We will tell some of these miracles, though we are not curious in the research, nor would we want to appear naïve in telling his greatness.

On October 3, 1933, the first Friday of the month, Father Damiano told Mrs. Foresi to prepare herself to accept a serious illness of her husband, lawyer Tito Tacci, of Mogliano, who had his offices in Macerata and Civitanova. "He will have a stroke by the feast of Christ the King," he told her. "Pray with me that he may not die."

It happened just like that. On October 29, while he was getting ready to go to Mass in Civitanova, the lawyer became suddenly stiff like a block of marble. He was quickly brought to Macerata and someone called Father Damiano asking him to go and see him the following day. He went. When he arrived, he realized how critical the situation was, and asked to pray in a corner. Someone who witnessed the event said, "First he prayed with joined hands and closed eyes; then he opened his eyes and looked up, as if he looked at someone who was talking to him, and kept on nodding. Then, his face full of joy, with his eyes shining and a big smile, he just said: ‘Thank you’."

Still kneeling, he turned toward lady Amelia and said, "The Blessed Virgin Mary has granted me the grace." Then he got up, he came close to the patient, blessed him and kindly touched his cheek, telling him that the Blessed Virgin had listened to his prayer, but he had to buy a big bell for the little church of the Holy Family in the neighborhood of Poggio Imperiale. The lawyer, still unable to speak, showed three fingers to signify that he would have bought three bells, as he later told his wife who was preparing coffee for Father Damiano.

He will live for seven more years – added the religious – more or less. Your mother will die one year later. In fact, the lawyer died on January 14, 1941, and Amelia’s mother died in February 1942.

Father Damiano encouraged Mrs. Tacci – to whom he also confided that he had never committed a mortal sin – to be operated on for her hernia before the transfer of a doctor she really trusted. The lady didn’t know anything of the sickness because the doctors hadn’t told her anything. However, she obeyed and asked to be operated.

The surgeon operated on her immediately but told her husband that the wound would not heal. So, the lady had Father Damiano called for her last confession. He arrived with his slow stride and asked her if she wanted to live or die. "If I lived and lost my soul, I’d rather die," she said. "Then you have to live," he concluded, tracing a sign of the cross on her wound that soon healed.

Once, a lady was seen crying in front of the image of the Blessed Virgin in the convent of the capuchin fathers. She seemed distressed about her pregnant niece, fearing the creature she had in her womb was already dead. Lady Amelia, who happened to be there by chance, asked what was the matter and then went immediately to look for Father Damiano. He was in the sacristy and came out even before being called. "The Blessed Virgin gives you the grace," he said to the girl before anyone had said anything, "but from now on you have to promise to look only at your husband."

The girl was shocked. Who told Father Damiano that her husband had been involved in an argument with a man who seemed to be after her?

"Here is some oil from the light to the Blessed Sacrament," continued Father Damiano giving her a bit of cotton he had dipped in the oil, "but we can’t take the oil without giving it back, because the light keeps him vigil day and night. Use the oil on your leg and arm and say three Hail Mary to the Blessed Virgin in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. Then, once at home, you’ll be cured."

And that’s exactly what happened.

Rosa Bozzi, Amelia’s mother, once rushed to Macerata asking her daughter to accompany her to see Father Damiano. She wanted to tell him about her daughter-in-law who was critically ill because of a premature birth and a severe case of nephritis. Father Damiano was hearing confessions. The two women decided to wait. Then, opening the curtain of the confessional, Father Damiano told Amelia: "Tell your mother to go, I will take care of everything."

And he pulled back the curtain.

Rosa protested. "How can he take care of everything if I didn’t tell him anything? Mother, get on the train and go back." Amelia said, "He knows everything."

When she arrived home, Rosa was greeted by the cry of the little nephew, born during her absence, and the tears of her daughter-in-law who had been cured from nephritis.

One day he was called to perform an exorcism in Sforzacosta. As he was getting back into the car, after he had freed the man, he accidentally hit the side of the car so violently that he fell on the ground with a wound on his right leg. Amelia (she is still the one who tells us the story) brought him a bottle of ointment. "I accept it for the Friars," Father Damiano said, "because my wound has to remain like this." The superior ordered him to go and see doctor Barone who gave him an ointment that will heal the wound in four or five days. Father Damiano commented, "Maybe so, but my wound will not heal because I had it as an expiation." And he had it until he died.

His relatives in Argentina received other graces. Some were received in the Marche region and others are being received today, so much so that it was decided to open the process of beatification. The process will probably begin since the Blessed Virgin promised it to Father Damiano who mentioned about it with a few words as if they had escaped him in a moment of distraction.

TOWARD ETERNITY

Evening comes even on the brightest of days, and the night approaches sooner if the day has had some meteorological disturbance, that in people’s lives corresponds to sicknesses and in the life of saints to penance.

"Father Damiano could not live long because of too much penance," wrote one woman. In fact, his body gave up when he was fifty-seven. A stroke partially paralyzed him; he almost lost his sight. Suffering from nephrites and afflicted by a wound under the left knee, he was sent from Montegiorgio to the infirmary of Macerata.

He accepted his illness and his transfer, but he couldn’t give up his work, happy to be a "deacon of Christ", as St. Ignatius of Antioch said. Leaning on his cane, he would visit his sick confreres and ask about their health, he would perform the services his situation allowed him to. He would hear the confession of people from far away (Father Vincenzo Lanci would arrive regularly from Fossombrone). He would sweep the church. He would spend hours and hours in front of the altar to pray for everyone, like the man who ‘suffers God’s things’ (Pati divina, said St. Thomas) and the ones of people (Pati humana).

"When I was free from taking care of the church and teaching," wrote Father Oreste Prosperi, "I’d run to the convent, open the door, look into the church and see Father Damiano holding the rosary next to the tabernacle. It was like a vision."

"I found him sick in bed," says Father Filippo Piccinini, founder of the Servants of Mercy, "closed in a little room, all recollected, and with an expression of goodness and humility."

In the last months of life, rather than go outside for a breath of fresh air like the doctors and confreres suggested, he would remain in his room to pray the rosary because ‘only in this way sinners are converted and souls saved’ he would say showing the rosary. Sometimes, nobody came, especially during winter, when the sun has a hard time to rise over the fog and quickly disappears at noontime. Then, someone, misquoting the Scriptures, would say, "Father Damiano, I called them, but they would not run." He would only smile, and showing the rosary would reply, "With this one, if it is not today, it will be tomorrow."

He had an extraordinary appreciation for the sacrament of reconciliation, a decisive element in spiritual life. He considered it a stage in the progress toward conversion, a journey of light, an irreplaceable sacrament almost as important as baptism; a true renewal of baptism. In his poor theology, he was certain that, just like baptism is at the origin of faith as a gift, the sacrament of reconciliation brings about charity and enlightens knowledge.

We’ve made the sacrament of reconciliation an institutional precept, maintaining that its present form comes from the monks and was introduced only in relatively recent times; the Council (Lateran IV, in 1215) speaks of it as a sufficient means, at least once a year.

This "discovery" has given us a feeling similar to the one of those who regain freedom. The result, though, has been a deterioration of Christian life.

Those who have lived the sacrament of reconciliation the way Father Damiano did, affirm that the greatest graces are connected to simple confessions made at the feet of a priest; the most profound mystical experiences should be attributed to this sacrament, not so much because it frees people from sins, but mostly because it leads to experience the love flowing from the redeeming Blood of Christ.

During his sickness, Father Damiano never expressed a complaint, never showed impatience, certain that Jesus is our Cyrenean. Father Bernanrdo Gabrielli wrote: "Yet, according to the doctors, the different sicknesses must have inflicted him severe pain. His strict diet combined with his penances made him move with great effort and great pain along the corridors of the infirmary.

Despite everything, he was always peaceful, sometimes even cheerful, transmitting happiness to sick confreres with a joke, a few words in Latin, as was his custom, or telling an amusing episode. He didn’t look like a patient, but someone who was there to cheer up and edify others".

This reference to his serendipity is truly interesting; it shows that despite his physical distress, he still had a smile for those worse off than him.

Used to rising before sunrise, he would do the Way of the cross, immerse himself into meditation, abandon himself to a long thanksgiving after celebrating the Eucharist. Then he would visit the sick and say, "Should we say the rosary?" And he would start without waiting for their answer.

His whole life had been lived based on the cross, and he had reached an evangelical balance, fruit of a sound will and good works. He had never been a superior, but he had learned to give orders to the most arrogant of subjects: pride. His spirituality, more than doctrine, was a constant baptism in the waters of God’s mercy.

Like someone at the start of his last day, he could not forget the One who gave birth to the Dawn of humanity. He lived his whole life intimately united with Mary; he kept his rosary so tight that his thumb remained deformed. Looking at him, people could understand what God can become for those who love Him with profound faith unconditionally (St. Bernard).

His sickness got worse but as long as he had some breath, he could be heard saying prayers and invocations. He died on August 23, just a few days before the feast of the Assumption.

Since he didn’t have a decent habit, Friar Camillo, the nurse who assisted him the last months, gave him his. The only things left in his room were a spool of thread and a needle. If he had to write his will, he would have left only his body and soul because out of love, desire, and affection, he didn’t have anything else in this world.

In St. Vittoria in Matenano, at his death, they rang the bells and indicted a public mourning.

At his death, his rough face had a beauty and a light springing forth from his soul, just like Cesare Pavisa had depicted him in the frescos of the chapel where lay the relics of Blessed Benedetto of Urbino in Fossombrone: full of life, young, shining, as if an early aureole had anticipated the glory the Church might give him one day.

Who wouldn’t love to die this way?

Five years later, lady Amelia Foresi, wife of lawyer Tacci, grateful for all Father Damiano had done for her husband, asked to exhume the body to place it in a burial place.

Friar Edoardo Baldassarri tells us: "We went to the cemetery with an expensive casket. The caretaker seemed surprised and said that a cheap coffin would have been enough since we would have found only a bunch of bones. Yet, despite the fact that the lid of the coffin Father Damiano had been buried in was broken in a few places, we found the body whole, covered with flesh, his cheeks covered with the beard we all knew. Moths had eaten the habit and his hands were a little black.

The superior, Father Giuseppe of Civitanova, was out of his mind; the caretaker couldn’t believe his eyes. The only one who wasn’t surprised at all was Mrs. Tacci. She remembered very clearly what father Damiano had told her before dying. "Soon I will die, but you will see me in a few years."

During the Second World War, an officer of the German Army was leading a platoon in retreat through the countryside near Villa Strada of Cingoli with the help of a map. He was looking for Pianmartino, marked on the map as grosse Dorf, big village. When someone pointed out to him the few homes called Pianmartino, he exclaimed: "Das ist seher klein, but this is small!"

Who knows, maybe one day, if the process of beatification reaches the end, Pianmartino will end up in the prayer books, where all things are great.

Pianmartino is a cluster of houses next to the dirt road connecting Villa Torre and Villa Strada, two small suburbs of Cingoli.

I’ve gone through that place many times when, as a young priest, I would go from Torre to Strada for my ministry. Simple, cordial, poor people live there and we would exchange a word or gesture to say hello. Many children and kids would be in the midst of improvised games; mothers would be busy with household chores or working in the fields while their husbands were supporting their families as woodcutters in the nearby area. In one of those houses, between 1870 and 1880, lived the Sfascia family, six people in all: the parents and four children. At 16, one of the children had a bright idea of becoming a friar. Maybe, as they used to say at that time, not one of those who said Mass. In fact, he was illiterate since there wasn’t even a primary school in Pianmartino. He mentioned his idea to the pastor of Villa Strada, about two kilometers away from where he lived. Father Raffaele Perugini was a true man of God and had a feeling that the Sfascia boy was a young tree more precious than the ones his father chopped down as a woodcutter. He therefore encouraged him to learn how to read and write, and offered to be his teacher. Damiano was so enthused that Father Raffaele introduced him to the study of the Latin language as well. When Damiano asked to join the Capuchin Fathers, they accepted him into their major seminary. Damiano showed good attitude and moved into the novitiate to study theology, and on June 4, 1898, he was ordained priest. He was 23. For the next 38 years, until he was 61, he committed himself to live his priesthood centered in Christ and spent in ministry.

Father Damiano is both very different and yet very much like St. John Vianney, the patron saint of Ars.

One was a religious priest, the other a diocesan; one Italian and the other French. But both of them full of love of God and completely dedicated to saving people. They are also alike because Father Damiano, just like the saint of Ars, walked the spiritual road of penance, commitment to ministry, and prayer. This road is paved with great humility. It was humility, since the beginning, that moved Father Damiano to tell his Provincial Minister that he was available "for the convents nobody wanted to go to," and he asked his local superior to entrust him with "the most difficult places". Father Damiano chose a life of penance by giving up eating meat and drinking wine, sleeping on rough boards.

He regarded this penitential life style as the best way to prepare for his favorite form of ministry, the sacrament of reconciliation and spiritual direction. He was always ready to hear confessions and used all means to bring people to receive this sacrament. He listened, understood the most delicate situations, invited to contrition and conversion, gave hope, encouraged people on a journey of conversion not "walking ", but "running the race which lies ahead; let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who inspires and perfects our faith" (Heb. 12:2).

People were touched by his words because he shared his own project of life, centered on Christ and the Blessed Virgin. Everyone knew that he spent a great deal of the day and of the night in adoration of the Holy Eucharist present in the tabernacle. One of his confreres offers this witness: "One day I went to visit him in the infirmary of Macerata. Since I couldn’t find him anywhere, I was told to take a look in the chapel. As I opened the door, I saw him kneeling in front of the altar, with his face and hands raised toward the tabernacle, almost out of his senses, unaware of the noise made or my presence." He lived constantly in God and for God.

He was deeply devoted to the Blessed Virgin with the 15 Marian Saturdays, the 5 Fridays of the Sorrowful Mother, the Month of May, fasting on Saturdays, praying the Rosary "often kneeling and his eyes full of tears." He had a filial love to the Blessed Virgin and tried to spread this love in all the families he visited with great simplicity, clearly identifying himself as a capuchin friar. He wished goodness and peace from his heart, a happy witness of the spirituality of Saint Francis of Assisi.

+ Odo Fusi-Pecci

Bishop emeritus of Senigallia