Saint Gaetano and devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus

Two men were born in the late nineteenth century in Italy, were ordained as priests, became widely known during their own lifetimes, and are now canonized saints. While Saint Gaetano Catanoso had much in common with the more famous Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, contrasting the lives of the two men perfectly illustrates how God calls every man and woman in a personal, unique way.

Gaetano was born in 1879, eight years before Francesco Forgione (the future Padre Pio) was born, and Gaetano died in 1963—on April 4th, his feast day—only five years before Padre Pio died. Both men lived through the violence and unrest of the twentieth century, particularly World Wars I and II, as Catholic priests in Italy.

However, while Pio was born into a poor family in the small town of Pietrelcina, Gaetano was born into a prosperous family in the large city of Reggio Calabria, about two hundred miles away. Gaetano recognized a call to the priesthood from the time he was young and entered a minor seminary when he was ten years old. He had to return to his home several times due to health problems, but in 1902, at the age of twenty-three, he was ordained a priest. Gaetano served as a parish priest for the archdiocese of Reggio Calabria for the rest of his long life.

One wonders what his archbishop was thinking when he sent the young priest to the remote parish of Pentedattilo. While Pentedattilo can claim its founding all the way back in 640 B.C., an eighteenth-century earthquake led almost all the residents to leave, and it is virtually a ghost town today. For the seventeen years that Gaetano served there, he had to travel by mule or hike the mountains on foot to reach isolated Catholics who were scattered throughout the area.

Or perhaps the archbishop knew exactly what he was doing. Gaetano was challenged, not daunted, by such a rigorous life, seeing his rural ministry as a way of walking in the footsteps of Christ. In 1921, the archbishop decided to transfer him to a larger parish, back in Reggio Calabria.

There Gaetano served as a spiritual director for seminarians, a hospital chaplain, and a confessor for religious communities and those in prisons. He coaxed his fellow priests into joining what he called “flying squads”, groups of priests who worked together to offer parish missions and hear confessions, stirring up the faith among the faithful. He invited Catholics to commit to praying for priestly vocations through a pious association that he created.

He was committed to serving the material needs of his people, as well as their spiritual needs. Gaetano inspired women to join a new religious order of sisters that he founded. His sisters educated children in the order’s schools and cared for seniors in the order’s homes for the elderly. During World War II, he established an orphanage to care for children whose parents had died.

But Gaetano was no more a social worker than was Padre Pio. He found the strength for his apostolates through the many hours he spent praying before the Blessed Sacrament. He had a deep devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, and his religious order was named after Saint Veronica, who famously wiped our Lord’s face during His Passion.

What does it mean to have a devotion to the Face of Jesus? For some, it means praying a traditional litany, chaplet, or short prayer to the Holy Face. This devotion was popularized by The Golden Arrow, the autobiography written by the French Carmelite nun Sister Mary of Saint Peter (1816-1848). Young Thérèse Martin (1873-1897) took the name in religious life of Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, testifying to the future saint’s personal affection for this devotion and its popularity in France.

But this devotion goes back much farther in time than the nineteenth century. The images commonly associated with the Holy Face of Jesus devotion are strongly linked to the images of the Shroud of Turin and the Mandylion, also called the Image of Edessa or Veronica’s Veil. The history of the Shroud and the Mandylion is complex and has been the subject of books, articles, and documentaries, and there is strong modern evidence for the validity of the Shroud as the burial cloth of Christ. While the Catholic Church might not officially claim that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of our Savior, public exhibitions of the Shroud have helped Catholics imagine the reality of Christ’s Passion for many centuries.

Saint Gaetano’s devotion to the Holy Face of Christ was surely personal, but it was also practical. How could he help his parishioners draw close to Christ when they were illiterate or poor or struggling to survive during a war, when even coming to a church was time-consuming or dangerous? Why not encourage them to supplement their practice of the sacraments with a devotion that had spread even more rapidly since 1898?

That’s the year that a photographer discovered a striking face in the photographic negative of the Shroud of Turin. This powerful image did not need to be verified by the Vatican for ordinary Catholics to understand its meaning. The photograph reminded them—as it reminds us—that Jesus Christ is truly God, truly Man, and truly died an agonizing death for all of us. Praying with the aid of pictures of our Lord, as portrayed by photography or paintings or icons or mass-produced holy cards, is not idolatry. It’s human. As creatures possessing both souls and bodies, physical images help us pray, just as photographs of our loved ones stir up our affection for them. Representations of the Holy Face can remind us just how easy it is to talk to our Lord about anything and everything.

What Padre Pio communicated through his life and his mystical gifts, Saint Gaetano Catanoso taught through his priestly life, his dedication to service of the needy, and his devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. But the best way for any Catholic to practice Saint Gaetano’s devotion is not by merely purchasing holy cards; it is by adoring our Lord in the Eucharist. If the holy priest were alive today, he would certainly recommend praying the traditional prayers to the Holy Face, but he would also remind us to spend time before the Blessed Sacrament. Or, as he described it,

If we wish to adore the real Face of Jesus…, we can find it in the divine Eucharist, where with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Face of Our Lord is hidden under the white veil of the Host.

God calls every man, woman, and child to know, love, and serve him. For one person, his particular vocation might involve receiving the stigmata, while another’s vocation might involve climbing mountains. But every Catholic’s vocation should involve spending time gazing on the face of Jesus Christ, whether through our eyes, in our hearts, or on our altars.