Dominic Savio
Life and witness
Student of Don Bosco whose joyful seriousness shows that youthful holiness is built through ordinary fidelity.
Biographical overview
Dominic Savio (Italian: Domenico Savio; 2 April 1842 – 9 March 1857) was a 19th-century Italian teenager who was a student of John Bosco and became a Catholic saint. 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 canonized a saint by Pope Pius XII in 1954. 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 too young to be considered for sainthood, he was considered eligible for such a singular honour on the basis of displaying "heroic virtue" in his everyday life. Savio was canonised a saint on 12 June 1954 by Pope Pius XII, making him the youngest non-martyr to be canonised in the Catholic Church, until the canonisations of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the pious visionaries of Fatima (aged 10 and 9 respectively), in 2017.