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Saint Giuseppe Freinademetz

Those who know the village of Badia, know the name of Saint Giuseppe Freinademetz. He was born in Oies - Badia on the15th of April of 1852, took his ordination of diocese of Bressanone on the 25th of July 1875.
After two years in San Martino in Badia, he went to Steyl in Austria to prepare for a life as a missionary.
And yet a year late he settled in China and more precisely in Hong Kong. From that time on he devoted himself to chinese people up to his death, in 1908. He was never scared by difficulties, from persecutions, and from death he often faced very close. In the beginning his mission was composed by a hundred- sixty catholics and at his death they were forty thousand. Twenty years after his death the number was close to two hundred thousand subdivided in five dioceses.

During his mission Saint Freinademetz wrote many letters, to his family, friends, and also benefactors. In his letters he witnessed the love for his homeland and he thanked God for the task he had given him. All his letters witnessed only one great fear, that too many souls were lost, and he feared his family faith would get lost too. This took him to pray and work, without rest, and took him from one place to the other to see the Christian communities, to take God's message and to talk about faith. The people who used to know him, said he was the incarnation of Good, but instead of seeing the Good in the world, he saw all the bad, all the world's sins.

Saint Giuseppe Freinademetz died on the 28th of January in 1908, after being persecuted and tortured. Pope Paul VI called him Blessed in 1975 and Pope Paulus II declared him Holy on the 5th October 2003.


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