St. Dominic Savio

Dominic Savio (2 April 1842 – 9 March 1857) was an Italian adolescent student of Saint John Bosco. He was studying to be a priest when he became ill and died at the age of 14, possibly from pleurisy. He was noted for his piety and devotion to the Catholic faith, and was eventually canonized. Bosco regarded Savio very highly, and wrote a biography of his young student, The Life of Dominic Savio. This volume, along with other accounts of him, were critical factors in his cause for sainthood. Despite the fact that many people considered him to have died at too young an age – fourteen – to be considered for sainthood, he was considered eligible for such singular honor on the basis of his having displayed "heroic virtue" in his everyday life. He is the only person of his age group who was declared a saint not on the basis of his having been a martyr, but on the basis of having lived what was seen as a holy life. Savio was canonized a saint on 12 June 1954, by Pope Pius XII, making him the youngest non-martyr to be canonized in the Catholic Church until the canonizations of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the pious visionaries of Fatima, in 2017. His feastday is March 9.