St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows

St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows was born Francesco Possenti on 1 March 1838 at Assisi, Italy, and died on 27 February 1862 at Isola del Gran Sasso, aged twenty-three. Charming, popular, and fond of the theater, fine clothes, and society, he seemed set for a comfortable worldly life; but a series of illnesses and the death of a beloved sister, and finally a grace received during a procession of an image of Our Lady, moved him to abandon the world and enter the Passionist congregation, taking the name Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin.

As a Passionist student he pursued holiness in ordinary community life with quiet intensity, marked above all by a tender devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows and by cheerful, exact fidelity to his rule. Tuberculosis cut him down before he could be ordained a priest, and he died with serenity, still a young religious. Canonized in 1920, he is honored as a patron of youth, students, and seminarians, and his intercession was linked to the healing of St. Gemma Galgani.