James of Poirino

JAMES OF POIRINO. - In the world, Luigi Marocco. An Observant Friar Minor, born at Poirino on 10 March 1808, died at the Madonna degli Angeli (Turin) on 30 September 1885; he was curate of S. Maria degli Angeli in Turin, to whose parish district the Cavour family belonged. He became familiar with the family and won the friendship of the great statesman. In 1854 Count Cavour, as cholera was raging and in anticipation that there might occur in his case what had occurred in 1850 for the minister Count di Santarosa, had Fr. G. summoned and prescribed for him (as Massari relates) "in what manner matters should proceed should he come to the point of death." When Cavour was struck by the inexorable disease that carried him to the grave on 6 June 1861, Fr. G. was in fact called to his bedside, and an official communiqué announced that the Count had died fortified by all the Sacraments. This led to the supposition that everything had taken place in conformity with the canonical prescriptions; solemn religious funerals were therefore celebrated in many places. But a denial by Marquis Gustavo Cavour that appeared in the newspapers, which denied any retraction, caused a great stir throughout the Catholic world, and many bishops and various apostolic nuncios asked Rome for instructions.

Pius IX gave orders to the chargé of the Holy See and to the vicar general of Turin to inform him exactly how matters had gone: but Fr. G., when questioned, shut himself up in a mysterious and obstinate silence. Thinking that he did so out of fear of reprisals, he was summoned to Rome, where he arrived provided with instructions from the government, which bore the expenses of the journey and entrusted him to the protection of the Sardinian consul Count Teccio di Bajo. Neither to his own superiors, nor to Pius IX, who questioned him personally, did Fr. G. disclose the truth, confining himself to generic declarations that he had done his duty and was at peace in his conscience: he could say no more because he was bound by the sacramental seal. In vain were attempts made to persuade him that the fact of the retraction was not in itself subject to the sacramental seal: he did not retreat from the positions he had taken. The Pope therefore deprived him of the faculty of hearing confessions, in which he was not reinstated until twenty years later by Leo XIII. Fr. G. was rewarded by the Government with the insignia of the Mauritian Order and with a modest pension, for distinguished services rendered to his country. He ended his days miserably and died, says Masera, "in the most desolate abandonment." He left some memoirs, published by Mazziotti, in which the episode is covered with the usual reserve.

Pietro Pirri