Gaspare Goggi

From the time of his ordination, Don Gaspare Goggi became a leading collaborator for Don Orione. In 1904, he was sent to Rome to become the first rector of the Church of Saint Anne of the Palafrenieri at the Vatican. There, he exercised a highly frequented ministry of confession and served as spiritual director to the sisters of Pope Saint Pius X. In May 1907, Pope Pius X chose him to accompany Cardinal Carlo Perosi during an apostolic visitation of the seminaries in Sicily. Despite extreme physical and psychological exhaustion due to his illness, he continued to spend himself without counting the cost. His condition became critical in May 1908, and he died on August 4, 1908, at the hospital in Alessandria at the age of 31.

The reputation for holiness of Father Gaspare Goggi spread immediately after his death. Don Orione himself considered him a model of heroic virtue. The cause for beatification and canonization was officially opened in the diocese of Alessandria in 1959. The informative process was validated by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on February 12, 1994. The Positio on his heroic virtues was published in 2021. After the favorable examination by the commission of historians in 2023 and theologians in 2024, the ordinary session of cardinals and bishops pronounced positively on November 4, 2025.

On November 21, 2025, Pope Leo XIV authorized the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to promulgate the decree recognizing the heroic virtues of Father Gaspare Goggi, thereby conferring upon him the title of Venerable. His mortal remains, initially interred in the Bettole cemetery of Tortona, were transferred on May 22, 1960, to the crypt of the sanctuary of the Madonna della Guardia in Tortona, where they rest alongside those of Saint Luigi Orione.

The spirituality of Father Gaspare Goggi is deeply marked by the joyful acceptance of suffering and conformity to Christ crucified. Despite his illness, he knew how to combine intense intellectual and pastoral activity with a profound life of prayer, centered on the Eucharist, the Virgin Mary, and absolute fidelity to the Pope. Don Orione described him as an elite soul, a saint as pious as he was learned. He is honored today within the Orionine family as the model of the religious capable of uniting science and charity for the service of the poorest.