Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati’s Incorruptible body in Sydney, Australia for the World Youth day 2008 – WYD 2008 Photo highlights I

HIS personal motto, “to the highest”, was inscribed on his coffin, but not even Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati could have envisaged the extraordinary journey he would make more than eight decades after his death. The Italian student was just 24 when he succumbed to the effects of polio in 1925 but his brief life ministering to the poor has long been seen as an inspiration to young Catholics worldwide. According to Vatican officials who have inspected his remains, his body has never decomposed but his 150kg, zinc-lined coffin will remain closed throughout the Sydney visit, its integrity protected by red wax seals affixed by the Archbishop of Turin.

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For World Youth Day co-ordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher, the arrival of the saint-in-waiting was the result of great planning and preparation. “Over several years we had conversations with his family – his sister, who has since died at the age of 105 – and his niece, who was a spring chicken of 80, was very helpful,” he said. “It was a very complex process – all I could really do was pray at his tomb in Turin and say: ‘We invite you and we want you to come’.” Pier Giorgio Frassati’s coffin will be on display at St Benedict’s Church, Broadway, until July 10. It will be moved to St Mary’s Cathedral on July 11 for the remainder of World Youth Day.

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bluepanjeet: I am an ex-capuchin seminarian who dream. I dream of becoming someone of service to my fellowmen. Though limited and often held by my own whims and caprices, humanness, flaws, warts and all, I’m striving to make my journey a meaningful and fruitful one. I try to make my dream inside and not outside of the world I am living in. My dream is simple, insignificant to others and trivial to some, but I dare take the leap against the flow the society’s standards. I dream big, but I start from small steps. I look at the big picture, but begin with the tiniest of all details. I do extraordinary things in the ordinariness of all events. Like Francis of Assisi before me, I have a dream, a simple and small dream. This blog is the start of a much bigger dream, a realization, an effort to make a difference in the world and its inhabitants. Join me as I journey in the secular world, blogging about my daily traversals which are often times accompanied by the moral lessons of life's humor and irony, the integration of the human and the Divine, my search for my proper place in the greater scheme of things and my never ending flight towards my aspirations, yearnings and goals On The Wings Of My Dream.