Luigi Versiglia

 St. Luigi Versiglia - 1873-1930

Luigi was born in Pavia, Italy in 1873. His parents sent him to school at one of the oratories that the Salesians of Don Bosco managed. His childhood dream was to become a veterinarian. About 1887, St. Don Bosco saw something in the boy and told him that he would like to meet with him and tell him something important. Unfortunately, Don Bosco died before the meeting could take place. What was it that he wanted to tell the boy? Could it be that he foresaw the saint that Luigi would eventually become?

Luigi soon entered the Salesian Order himself and was ordained to the priesthood in 1895 (by special dispensation since he was under the canonical age for ordination). He served as Novice Master for the Salesians in Rome for about 10 years. In 1906, he led the first expedition for Salesian missionaries into China. He was to fulfill a dream that Don Bosco had had about the Church in China. Bosco had dreamt of a chalice filled with sweat and another filled with blood of Salesians. 

Luigi established the Motherhouse of the order in Macau, China. He and his fellow missionaries founded a school and an orphanage. They also established aged care homes and leper colonies. When he heard that the area in which he served was going to be made a vicariate, he wrote to his superiors asking that he not be made a bishop. But he was named the bishop anyway. He refused to let his new office keep him from serving his people and spent much of his time traveling to every corner of his diocese. 

On February 25, 1930, Luigi was traveling with another priest, St. Callisto Caravario, by boat to visit a mission along the river. Communist pirates boarded the boat. When they realized that the pirates planned on abducting an enslaving three young women who were also traveling on the boat, the priests shielded the women and tried to fight the pirates off physically. The pirates knocked them unconscious and bound them. The priests came to their senses and, while watching the pirates rummaging through their luggage, they heard each other's confession. They were dragged off the boat into the thicket, and both were shot. Their bodies were found two days later and the girls who had been captured were released within a week. They never forgot how their spiritual Fathers fought and laid down their lives for them.

His feast day, shared with his brother priest St. Callisto, is February 25. St. Luigi and St. Callisto, pray for us.