Giacomo Abbondo
Italian priest (1720-1788)
Feast: 9 February (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
The Vatican record
- 9 May 2014 — Heroic virtue declared — title Venerable (decree list, 2014)
- 5 May 2015 — Miracle through their intercession approved (decree list, 2015)
Who they were
Giacomo Abbondo was born on 27 August 1720 at Salomino, near Tronzano in the province of Vercelli, and ordained a priest on 21 March 1744. While studying in Vercelli he joined a confraternity that cared for prisoners, and took a degree in letters.
From 1757 until his death he was parish priest of Tronzano, a wide parish of scattered farmhouses, where he preached, taught the catechism every Sunday afternoon to anyone who would come, and cared heroically for his people. He died at Tronzano on 9 February 1788.
The miracles
A 14-year-old boy — near Vercelli, Italy — 20 September 1907
Unloading hay, a fourteen-year-old boy lost his grip on a two-pronged pitchfork and fell on it; the prong went through his pelvis, in the days before antibiotics. He recovered rapidly and completely. On 26 June 2014 the Vatican's medical board found the healing scientifically inexplicable.
Why that counted as sanctity
The case of a 14-year-old boy was examined by the Church's doctors and theologians and approved as a miracle on 5 May 2015, opening the way to beatification. Beatification followed on June 2016.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography of Blessed Giacomo Abbondo, with the miracle
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — promulgated decrees (causesanti.va), summarised in our own words
- Wikidata Q19892601 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Giacomo Abbondo (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.