Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, the "Gardener of the Blessed Virgin"

Born in Assisi, where his father was governor and a lawyer for the Papal States, Francesco Possenti could have pursued a pleasant life, indulging his passion for hunting and dancing, enjoying his own charm and beauty, which he did until the age of eighteen, despite the discreet but insistent calls of Heaven, as God had other plans for him. During the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, while attending a religious Marian procession, he saw the image of Our Lady turn her eyes towards him and look at him in such a way that he could never forget it. He heard Mary tell him that he must renounce the world and do penance. Despite his family's opposition, he joined the Passionists, a congregation dedicated to meditating on the sufferings of Jesus, and became Gabriele dell'Addolorata, Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. He died on 27 February 1862.

Les raisons d'y croire :

• Born into a professional family and destined for a great career, Francesco Possenti resisted his vocation for years. He was reluctant to leave a world that he loved, and a society were he was popular and attractive. Therefore the voice of the Virgin Mary calling him to leave the world could not have been a repressed inner desire.

• Besides the words he heard inviting him to leave the world to "do penance", Francesco saw in a flash the congregation where God was calling him, in a vision of the religious habit of the Passionist brothers - with the cross  on it - dedicated to atoning for the sins of the world by participating in Christ's Passion. This was not his choice, as he would have thought first of the Jesuits, who educated him as a child.

• In any case, Francesco had other plans. He was in love with a young society girl he had met at a ball, and had obtained her father's permission to court her and marry her after he finished his studies. This sudden change of direction, in the space of a second, can only be explained by the Virgin's gaze, which transformed him.

• After the revelation of 22 August 1856, Francesco was able to re-read his whole life from a providential perspective. He remembered, for example, how, at the age of fourteen, he had recovered without the help of a doctor from an illness that was thought to be fatal. During his illness, Francesco, who did not want to die so young, promised to enter religion if he recovered. His confessor and his father told him that this vow had no value before God and that he should think no more about it. He was only too happy to believe them and never felt any remorse.

• The previous year, during a hunting trip - his other passion along with dancing - Francesco slipped while jumping a ditch and his rifle slipped out of his hands, letting off a shot that he should have taken in the chest and that would have killed him instantly.

• When he revealed his new plans to his father, Sante Possenti, the latter, despite his piety, was horrified. Of the thirteen children born to him by his late wife, who had died young, many had not reached adulthood, and one of his surviving sons had already chosen the religious life by joining the Dominicans. Sante Possenti felt he had done his duty as a Christian. What's more, Francesco's health was fragile and his family was convinced that he would not be able to endure the rigorous lifestyle of the Passionists. His family therefore did everything in their power to dissuade him from his vocation, but to no avail.

• On the day his religious profession, Brother Gabriel, who had once been so afraid of a premature death, asked God for "the grace to die young". He had started to display the first symptoms of tuberculosis. This disease would bring a slow and painful agony that would allow him to offer up his sufferings for his sins and those of others, and to prepare himself for death. Knowing of his promise, his superiors asked that he add this restriction: "If it is for the greater glory of God".

• His request was granted, as he died at the age of twenty-three after a terrible night of agony. Desperately clutching the crucifix, the young man asked for the image of Our Lady of Sorrows, which he venerated and was part of his name in religion. As soon as the crucifix was placed in his hands, Brother Gabriel fell into ecstasy and died peacefully, contemplating the Madonna he loved so much. In this way, Mary confirmed what Gabriel liked to repeat: "If we sympathise with her pain, she will sympathise with ours, and, at the last hour, will visibly come to our bedside to assist us."

• Nothing should have drawn attention to this young man who died at the age of 23 in a remote convent of Italy, if miracles had not started occurring at his tomb right after his death, making it a place of pilgrimage that had to be enlarged to accommodate the thousands of faithful, most of them young, who came to pray to him. This earned him the popular nickname of "saint of miracles", which was not exaggerated, since the graces and cures attributed to him never ceased, as all records attest.

• Among the most famous are his apparitions in 1898 to (the future saint) Gemma Galgani, about to die of tuberculosis, whom Gabriel asked if she would accept to be cured in order to offer her sufferings for years for the salvation of sinners; and, in 1900, the cure of Maria Mazzarelli, a terminally ill tuberculosis patient, which led to his beatification.