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EN IT

blessed
Joseph Toniolo

blessed
Joseph Toniolo

EN IT
EN IT

blessed
Joseph Toniolo

The postulator Mons. Domenico Sorrentino on the life of Giuseppe Toniolo

The Venerable Servant of God Giuseppe Toniolo was born in Treviso on 7 March 1845. In his family he breathed a climate of faith, human virtues and patriotism. Several Venetian cities contributed to his formation. His medium-level studies at the Collegio Santa Caterina in Venice, and then the university ones in Padua, were decisive, he had professors of broad Christian and social scope, obtaining a degree in law on June 27, 1867. He married on September 4, 1878 Maria Schiratti, from whom he had seven sons. An exemplary family in terms of depth of Christian sentiments and human balance. He was professor of economics in Padua and Modena, and then definitively in Pisa. The chair, next to the family, was the daily training ground for his holiness.

Loyal to the Church and to the Pope, he participated in the Work of Congresses, bringing a new impulse, marked by social commitment. A true apostle of Rerum Novarum, he called Catholics together with various study organizations and scientific initiatives. He elaborated the Christian-democratic program as a plan for the global reconstruction of society around the principle of the common good for the benefit of the poorest. His cultural initiatives sowed the seed of the future Catholic university. Among the most lasting initiatives, that of the Social Weeks. He ended his existence with an appeal to Benedict XVI for a Catholic Institute of International Law for peace.

A layman of Catholic action, he was called to design a new stage when the Opera dei Congressi was closed. Cordially close to the young university students, he will not be forgotten by them. Fifteen years after his death, which took place on 7 October 1918, it was the fucini who promoted the cause of his beatification, immediately accompanied by Catholic Action and then by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. On June 14, 1971, the decree of heroic virtue was issued which made him venerable. Today the much desired beatification, made possible by the miracle that occurred in 2006 with the prodigious healing of Mr. Francesco Bortolini of Pieve di Soligo.

A great witness of lay holiness is thus introduced into the cult proper to the blessed. It will be a stimulus above all for those who are called to live the call to holiness in married life and in social, political and economic commitment. Gratitude to the Lord and to the Holy Father Benedict XVI becomes an invocation so that the hour of full glorification may soon come for today's Blessed, ad majorem Dei gloriam.