SCROSOPPI, LUIGI, ST.

Also called Luigi (Aloysius or Louis) of Udine; Oratorian (St. Philip Neri Oratory) priest and founder of the Sisters of Divine Providence (Suore della Provvidenza );b. Udine, Italy, Aug. 4, 1804; d. Udine, April 3, 1884. Following Luigi's ordination in 1827, he immediately began an apostolate to tend the poor and abandoned by establishing the Casa delle Derelitte. Additionally, he founded the Casa Provedimento for the formation of young women and the Opere for deaf-mute girls. He formed the women who assisted him in his charitable work into the Sisters of Divine Providence, and placed them under the patronage of Saint cajetan. The sisters continue to educate young girls in Argentina (since 1929), Bolivia (1980), Brazil (1927), India (1977), Italy (1837), Ivory Coast (1973), Romania (1992), Togo (1985), and Uruguay (1929). Scrosoppi, known for his exceptional charity and prayer life, gave his family fortune to the poor and joined the Oratorians before he died at the venerable age of eighty. He was both beatified (October 4, 1981) and canonized (June 10, 2001) by Pope John Paul II. The miracle required for canonization (approved July 1, 2000) involved the complete and instantaneous healing in 1996 of a Zambian Oratorian seminarian with advanced AIDS.

Feast: April 3 (formerly October 5).

Bibliography: Acta Apostolicae Sedis (1982): 534–37. L'Osservatore Romano, Eng. ed. 41 (1981): 1, 12. g. biasutti, Tutto di Gesù! (Udine, Italy 1968).

[k. i. rabenstein]