Luigi Boccardo

Luigi Boccardo was born on 9 August 1861 as the seventh of nine children to Gaspare Boccardo and Giuseppina Malerba; his siblings included his sister Giacinta and his brothers Albino and Giovanni Ottavio. His eldest brother was Giovanni Maria (20 November 1848 - 30 December 1913).^[3]

Giovanni Ottavio - at the age of thirteen - became Luigi's godfather at the latter's baptism and would have a decisive role in Luigi's future.^[3]

His parents - though farmers - managed to enroll their son in an education with the Barnabite Fathers where older brother Giovanni Ottavio also studied. The latter's good example served to have a great impact on Boccardo who began to think that he might want to become a priest and received additional confidence in that path when his sister Giacinta entered - in 1874 - a cloistered convent.^[3]

Boccardo's parents expressed their reluctance at allowing Luigi to become a priest but his older brother Giovanni Ottavio interceded to their parents on his behalf. He also took the financial burden of providing for his ecclesiastical studies. Boccardo commenced his studies in October 1875 and received the clerical cassock on 23 September 1877. It was around this time he contracted a severe illness in the form of an aggressive fever that almost killed him; a last resort to save him was water for him to drink from Lourdes. It was this water that helped him deepen and cultivate further a devotion to the Blessed Virgin and on a card wrote: "This is she who saved me and stole my heart".^[3]

During this period Boccardo also received the spiritual direction from Giuseppe Allamano. He was ordained to the priesthood on 7 June 1884 and received ordination from the Cardinal Archbishop of Turin Gaetano Alimonda. He celebrated his first Mass in the presence of his parents and siblings as well as the faithful on 8 June.^[1] Boccardo was appointed as a parochial vicar in the parish where his brother Giovanni Maria served as a parish priest at Pancalieri. He supported the latter when he founded the Sisters of Saint Cajetan. On 12 April 1886 he was appointed as the Vice-Rector and the spiritual director of priests at the Ecclesiastical Boarding School of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Turin and served for three decades with Allamano who was the rector.

He was made an Honorary Canon of the Collegiate of Ss. Trinity on 2 June 1909.^[1] In 1913 he published his first ascetic work entitled "The Spiritual Son" as part of his major work: "Confession and Management". He also published "The Spiritual Father" and "The Celestial Vocations" between 1913 and 1928.^[1] Boccardo's brother Giovanni Maria died on 30 December 1913; Boccardo later oversaw in 1924 the exhumation of his late brother.^[1] On 9 January 1914 - at the behest of Cardinal Agostino Richelmy - he was made the Superior General of his late brother's order.^[3] Boccardo also underwent pilgrimages to both Lourdes and Rome and also travelled south to Naples and then up north to both Lucca and Florence.^[1]

On 3 December 1919 he was made the director of the Institute for the Blind which was at the time in grave debt. He took residence with that institute on 12 June 1928. On 24 October 1931 he finished work and consecrated the new Shrine of Christ the King.^[3]

Boccardo - on 18 January 1932 - decided to establish his own religious congregation as a contemplative branch of his late brother's order and named it the Sisters of Jesus the King. The first vesting of its first members was held on 19 October 1932.^[3]

He presided over his final Mass on 26 April 1936^[3] and died in peace on 9 June 1936. His remains were moved from its first resting place on 15 November 1937 and were moved again on 8 June 1961.^[1][2]