Hildebrand Gregori

After his ordination, Father Hildebrand was tasked with the formation of young candidates (master of probands) at the monastery of San Silvestro in Montefano (Fabriano), and later founded a new probandate in Matelica in 1924. In 1933, he became prior of Montefano. In 1939, he was elected Abbot General of the Sylvestrine Benedictine Congregation. He would hold this office for twenty years (reelected three times until 1959), guiding the order through the trials of the Second World War and fostering its international expansion. During the war, from the monastery of Santo Stefano del Cacco in Rome (the general house), he displayed immense charity by welcoming refugees, families in distress, and persecuted individuals. Struck by the misery of the many orphans and street children in Rome after the war, he decided to come to their aid. In 1942, he founded the monastery of San Vincenzo in Bassano Romano to welcome and educate these poor and abandoned young boys. To perpetuate and extend this work of assistance, he conceived the creation of a female community. In 1950, he founded the "Pio Sodalizio" (Pious Association) of young women, which would officially become in 1977 the Congregation of the Benedictine Sisters of Reparation of the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Suore Benedettine Riparatrici del Santo Volto di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo). This congregation, recognized under pontifical right on February 7, 1978, is dedicated to reparatory adoration and to helping poor children, the chronically ill, and isolated elderly people. It subsequently developed in Italy, as well as in India, Poland, Romania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Father Hildebrand Gregori spent the final years of his life at the "Deo Gratias" religious house that he established in Rome (Via della Conciliazione 15), despite a long and painful illness (notably an ischemic stroke in 1978 that left him partially paralyzed). He died holily on November 12, 1985, at the age of 91. His remains are interred in the choir of the chapel of the Mother House of the Benedictine Sisters of Reparation of the Holy Face in Bassano Romano. Due to his reputation for holiness, the cause for beatification and canonization was opened at the Vicariate of Rome on February 29, 1992. The diocesan phase of the inquiry concluded solemnly on July 3, 2007. The process continued in Rome at the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Causes of Saints starting on April 22, 2008.

On November 7, 2014, Pope Francis authorized the promulgation of the decree recognizing the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Hildebrand Gregori, thereby declaring him Venerable. The decree was officially published on November 8, 2014, by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. For his beatification to be pronounced, the recognition of a miracle attributed to his intercession is required. His cause is currently in progress.

The spirituality of the Venerable Hildebrand Gregori is deeply centered on devotion and reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus (Santo Volto). In 1941, he met Blessed Maria Pierina De Micheli, apostle of the Holy Face, of whom he became the spiritual director and confidant for five years. Under her mystical influence, he acquired a profound devotion to the suffering Face of Christ, which he strove to contemplate and to make loved. For him, devotion to the Holy Face is not merely passive contemplation, but a call to active "reparation." This reparation is translated into acts of concrete love toward the suffering members of the Body of Christ: orphans, the poor, the sick, and the excluded, in whom he recognized the outraged Face of the Savior. He conceived of reparation as an act of love against "the sin of social injustice." His legacy endures today through the Congregation of the Benedictine Sisters of Reparation of the Holy Face, the Association of Friends of Father Hildebrand Gregori, as well as the International Institute for Research on the Face of Christ (founded in collaboration with Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini).