Father Joseph Calvi, Servant of God, was born on May 1, 1901, in Cortemilia (Cuneo). Father Joseph Calvi, Servant of God, was born on May 1, 1901, in Cortemilia (Cuneo). He spent his childhood in Cortemilia on the banks of the Bormida River, in a peasant environment poor in material goods but rich in faith. Calm, docile and smiling. showed his commitment to the things of God by decisively participating in activities concerning his parish church of San Pantaleo in Cortemilia.
He entered the seminary in the Mother House of the Oblates of St. Joseph in Asti on September 12, 1914. He was calm in nature, charitable, affable and shy. He was animated by a deep spirit of prayer. He began his novitiate Nov. 1, 1917 in Asti, where he took his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience on Oct. 1, 1919. After that he spent ten months in Rome where he served as sacristan in the Church of San Lorenzo in Fonte in Via Urbana. Dal 1920 al 1926 di nuovo ad Asti, svolse gli studi filosofici e teologici nel seminario degli Oblati di San Giuseppe nella Casa madre. In October 1922 he expressed to the Superior General of the time. P. Alfredo Bianco’s desire to be a missionary. Among the Oblates he distinguished himself by charity in community life, kindness, mercy, humility with his brethren and trust in his superiors, virtues rooted in his confidence in God expressed in his writings, reaching the milestones of perpetual profession on Oct. 5, 1925, minor orders, diaconate on April 9, 1926, and priestly ordination on May 29, 1926 in Asti Cathedral.
On Sept. 14, 1926, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, he received the missionary crucifix together with other Oblates of St. Joseph in the Mother House in Asti, and on Sept. 16, 1926, he left Genoa for Brazil. He worked the first year in Curitiba in theAbrigo de Menores , one of the first institutions in the state of Paraná that collected abandoned boys to give them education, instruction and vocational training.
In the last months of 1927 the first signs of tuberculosis appeared, which in early 1928 led to his hospitalization at the San Sebastian Sanatorium in Lapa, Paraná, from which he seemed to benefit, living this first experience of illness with full trust in God.
He resumed his work as a missionary working, from 1929 to 1933, in the parish of Nossa Senhora do Rosário in the port of Paranaguá on the Atlantic, where he lived a time of fruitful priestly experience, animating numerous groups, exercising the Sacrament of Reconciliation and attentive to fraternal life in community. From 1933 to 1935 he worked in the southern suburbs of Curitiba, at Sacred Heart Parish, jn Agua Verde, where he left a significant imprint of his pastoral service. At the same time he was a mission counselor among the Oblate Missionaries of St. Joseph and in charge of the religious brothers.
In late 1935 he again manifested symptoms of tuberculosis.Alla fine del 1935 manifestò nuovamente i sintomi della tubercolosi. From the beginning of 1936 he was once again admitted to St. Sebastian’s Sanatorium in Lapa, where he spent the rest of his short life. Hospitalization was not simply an opportunity for him to cure himself in his illness, but became his mission, as a sick missionary among those sick with his own illness, dedicated to the service of the Lord found in the person of those hospitalized with him. He was also officially appointed chaplain of the sanatorium, where he practiced intense and heroic pastoral work. He, in spite of the illness that sometimes caused him extreme weakness, did not stop assisting the sick behaving with them like a brother, like a friend, a father, devoting himself unsparingly to the most seriously ill, and especially the terminally ill, at any hour even in the hours of the night. It made religious practices flourish again. He founded the Association of the ‘Apostolate of Suffering to carry out which he prepared and edited the publication of a monthly leaflet. He fostered devotion to the Sacred Heart and Our Lady with devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Conversions among the sick as a result of his action were numerous. He also cultivated the teaching of catechism among the children of the sanatorium staff. The pages of his notebooks – seven of which he wrote in Brazil, six in Italy during his formative years and which he always kept with him – show his commitment to preaching, his dedication to spiritual help, through a wealth of notes and references to the spiritual life, of the saints, his own inner experience nourished by the Word of God and in particular by his devotion to Our Lady.
The last year of his life was marked in the sanatorium by the painful news of his parents’ death in Italy, and by the progressive sufferings of the disease, which he always faced generously with lucidity. He died in the San Sebastian Sanatorium in Lapa, Paraná, Brazil,at half past two in the afternoon of September 26, 1943, at the age of 42. It was the younger members of the sanatorium who were the first to spread the fame of his holiness, saying, in passing on the news of his departure, that “Father Joseph the saint” had died.
On July 20, 2007, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints granted clearance for the opening of the cause of beatification of the servant of God. The trial at the Archdiocese of Curitiba began on Nov. 9, 2007 and ended in 2023. Currently, Father Joseph Calvi’s cause for beatification is at the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in Rome.
Bibliography: J.A. Bertolin, Padre José Calvi Un apóstolo entre os tubercolosos, Califórnia [Paraná] 2005; G. Miglietta, Padre Giuseppe Calvi Servant of God Missionary Oblate of St. Joseph in Brazil, Rome 2009; A. Santiago – G. Miglietta (eds.), Letters from a missionary in Brazil the Servant of God Father Joseph Calvi osj. Epistolary, in Studi Marelliani 15 (2023) I-X, 1-189; G. Miglietta, J.A. Bertolin, Father Giuseppe Calvi osj Servant of God, missionary and model of holy life, in Studi Marelliani 16 (2024) 1-184.
by Fr. Guido Miglietta osj,
deputy postulator
