Paul of the Cross

Who they were

Paolo Francesco Danei was born at Ovada in Piedmont, eldest of sixteen children of a noble but impoverished family, and worked with his father to support them while living a life of daily Mass and prayer. In 1713 he began to live as a hermit, and at 26 the bishop let him settle in a cell behind the church of Castellazzo Bormida, where he conceived and wrote the rule of a new congregation, the Poor of Jesus.

His Passionists devoted themselves to preaching the Passion of Christ. He spent much of his life in solitude on Monte Argentario, where he founded the first house, going out to preach missions in the poorest parts of the Maremma and the remote Tuscan islands. In 1771, with Mother Crocifissa Costantini, he founded the contemplative Passionist Nuns at Tarquinia. He died in Rome in 1775.

The miracles

The miracles examined for his canonisation are not described in the sources we have used.

Why that counted as sanctity

Paul of the Cross carried the Passion of Christ in his heart and spent his life preaching it to the poorest and most forgotten.

Connected on this site

• Vincent Strambi Saint
  “Strambi entered at the Passionists despite the congregation's founder, Paul of the Cross, refusing him several times due to Strambi's frail constitution.” — Wikipedia
• Bernard Mary of Jesus Blessed
  “He re-entered the order after his ordination and went on to hold several positions of leadership within his own order; he was even likened to Saint Paul of the Cross while Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius X held him in high esteem.” — Wikipedia
• Eufemia Gemma Giannini Venerable
  “She became novice mistress, then superior of a new Passionist monastery at Itri, and later founded the Missionary Sisters of Saint Gemma Galgani, a congregation of active life under the rule of Saint Paul of the Cross, which received diocesan approval in 1964 and sent its first sisters to the Congo.” — this site's research