Luigi Guanella was born on December 19, 1842, in Fraciscio, a village in the Diocese of Como, Italy. Raised by practicing Catholic parents who prayed the Rosary daily and read the lives of the saints, he developed a deep devotion that shaped his future ministry.
After completing his studies at the seminary in Como, he was ordained a priest on May 26, 1866. He served as parish priest in Savogno. During seven years of zealous ministry, he came into contact with Don Bosco and the Cottolengo institution in Turin. Eager for a more radical religious experience, in 1875 he went to Don Bosco and took religious vows for three years. The bishop of Como called him back to the diocese, and Don Guanella returned with the dream of founding an institution that would take in needy children.
Luigi is the founder of several religious institutes: the Daughters of Saint Mary of Providence (1890) and the Servants of Charity (24 March 1908) alongside his friends David Albertario and Giuseppe Toniolo. Guanella also founded the Pious Union of Saint Joseph (1914) with his supporter and first member Pope Pius X.
Driven by his motto “you cannot stop where there are poor to help,” he expanded his communities into other Italian regions and into Switzerland. In December 1912, at age seventy, he traveled to the United States to minister to Italian immigrants. He spent his final year in Rome aiding victims of the 1915 Abruzzo earthquake. He died on October 24, 1915.
During his time with Don Bosco at the Salesian College in Trinità di Mondovì, Don Guanella became familiar with the Third Order of St. Francis. On March 19, 1877, he joined the Order.
Even in his earliest published works, he signed his name as a Franciscan tertiary. He took this commitment seriously, seeing it as a deepening of his Christian and priestly vocation. He looked to St. Francis of Assisi as his guide and model, feeling a genuine devotion to him.
Saint Luigi Guanella was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 23, 2011, after the Catholic Church recognized a scientifically inexplicable recovery from a severe coma by William Glisson in 2002 as a miracle attributed to Guanella’s intercession.
The feast day is October 24.
Sources:
https://www.causesanti.va/it/santi-e-beati/luigi-guanella.html
Don Guanella “Franciscan”