Roman Catholic Saint. A native of Pontecurone, Tortona, Luigi Giovanni Orione came from a poor family, the son of a street paver. Frequenting the Valdocco Oratory in Turin, his piety soon gained the attention of its founder Saint John Bosco who numbered him among his favourite pupils. Opening his own oratory in 1892, he initiated a vocational school for the poor a year year later at the Saint Bernardine estate and was ordained priest on April 13, 1895, after joining for a brief period the Order of Franciscan Friars Minor in Voghera, which he had to leave due to his health. In 1899 Don Orione started to gather a group of priests and clerics that were to become "Piccola Opera della Divina Provvidenza," or the "Little Work of the Divine Providence", which group received the imprimatur of the local ordinary, Msgr. Igino Bandi, in 1903. Present in Messina and Reggio Calabria to assist the locals following the severe earthquake that shook the localities in 1908, dedicating three years of assistance to those in need, he moved to Marsica in 1915 after the area suffered a similarly devastating earthquake, founding that same year the Congregation of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity. At the end of the Great War, he began expanding his work, founding schools, farming colonies and charity organizations with particular emphasis in regards of the assistance towards the orphans and the poor. Starting foundations throughout Italy and the Americas though the following two decades, undergoing himself two missionary journeys that led him in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile, in the winter of 1940 he started suffering from serious cardiac and pulmonary ailments. Moving to Sanremo, somewhat against his will, to seek recuperation, on March 9, 1940 he is recorded to have said: "It is not among the palm trees that I would like to die, but amongst the poor who are Jesus Christ". Three days later, surrounded by fellow priests of his congregation he passed away after uttering the words: "Jesus, Jesus! I am going!" Buried at the sanctuary of Nostra Signora della Guardia in Tortona constructed through his initiative in 1931 with the help of priests and acolytes in gratitude to the Virgin Mary following the end of the hostilities of the Great War, when his body was exhumed in 1965 it was found in an amazingly perfect state of preservation and so it remains to this day. Pope John Paul II beatified him October 26, 1980 and nearly twenty-four years later canonized him on May 16, 2004. The charitable organizations initiated by Don Orione are still operating in abundance throughout twenty three nations. In the United States, the national shrine and headquarters of the Orionine congregation is located in East Boston, Massachusetts, on the hill known as Orient Heights in Boston's historic section.