Giuseppe FRASINETTI. — Priest, founder of the Sons of the Immaculate Mary, born in Genoa in 1804, died there on 2 January 1868; brother of Bl. Paola F., foundress of the Sisters of St Dorothy. Ordained priest in 1827, he exercised his pastoral ministry at S. Pietro di Quinto al Mare and then in the parish of S. Sabina in Genoa, where, elected prior-parish priest in 1839, he remained until his death. To his intense pastoral activity, which earned him the title of the “Italian Cure of Ars,” he added that of writer on ascetical and pastoral theology and moral theologian. His cause of beatification has been introduced at the Sacred Congregation of Rites.
His works, numbering more than a hundred, were collected in a complete edition under the care of Fr G. Capurro. His Compendium of the Moral Theology of St Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, published in Genoa in 1865–66 and reprinted a fourth time during the author’s lifetime, reached its eleventh edition (Turin 1948) with an adaptation to the Code of Canon Law, prepared by Frs F. M. Cappello and A. Gennaro.