St. Joseph Cafasso

St. Joseph Cafasso (15 January 1811 – 23 June 1860) was born at Castelnuovo d'Asti in Piedmont, the same village as his younger friend St. John Bosco. Ordained a priest despite a spinal deformity that left him short and stooped, he became a professor and then rector of the Ecclesiastical College in Turin, where he formed a generation of priests in sound moral theology and, against the rigorism then in fashion, in the merciful, balanced approach to the confessional inspired by St. Alphonsus Liguori.

He was the trusted spiritual director and mentor of Don Bosco, guiding and encouraging his work with the young. Cafasso gave himself especially to prisoners and to the condemned, accompanying dozens of men to the scaffold, hearing their confessions, and bringing them to die reconciled with God — for which he was called the "priest of the gallows." Worn out at forty-nine, he died in 1860 and was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1947, who named him patron of prison chaplains.