FRASSINETTI, GIUSEPPE. - Priest, founder of the Sons of Mary Immaculate, b. in Genoa in 1804, d. there on 2 Jan. 1868; brother of Bl. Paola F., founder of the Dorothean Sisters. Ordained priest in 1827, he exercised the pastoral ministry at S. Pietro di Quinto al Mare and then in the parish of S. Sabina in Genoa, where, elected prior-pastor in 1839, he remained until his death. To an intense pastoral activity, such that he was called the Italian “curé d'Ars,” he added that of a writer on pastoral asceticism and a moral theologian. His cause of beatification has been introduced before the S. Congregation of Rites.
His works, more than one hundred, have been collected in a complete edition edited by Fr. G. Capurro. His Compendio della teologia morale di s. Alfonso M. de Ligorio, published in Genoa in 1865–66, issued for the fourth time while the author was still living, has reached its eleventh edition (Turin 1948), with adaptation to the CIC carried out by Frs. F. M. Cappello and A. Gennaro.