Joseph Marello

Saint Joseph Marello (December 26, 1844 - May 30, 1895) was the son of Vincenzo and Anna Maria Marello. Joseph is just four years old when his mother died when he was very young, and the family moved from Turin to San Martino Alfieri, Italy.

Joseph entered the seminary at age 12, but his father wished him to study and be a success in business. At age 19 he contracted typhus and promised Our Lady that if he survived, he would continue his studies to be ordained. He recovered, attributed the cure to Our Lady of Consolation, and was ordained on September 19, 1868.

Joseph became the secretary to Bishop Carlo Savio at Asti, Italy, for 13 years. He attended the First Vatican Council with Bishop Savio in 1869-1870. Later, he took over an Asti retirement home to save it from bankruptcy. Joseph became the spiritual director and catechist in his diocese. In 1878, Joseph became the founder of the Oblates of Saint Joseph, a congregation dedicated to caring for the poor, educating the young, and assisting bishops in any capacity required. On February 17, 1889, he became the Bishop of Acqui, Italy. Joseph visited all the parishes in his diocese, and wrote six pastoral letters to his flock. He died while participating in a celebration of the third centennial of St. Philip Neri.

The first parish church named after Saint Joseph Marello was dedicated on October 22, 2011, by Bishop Jaime Soto (Fr. Arnold Ortiz, pastor) in Granite Bay, CA, USA.

The cause for his canonization began on May 28, 1948. On June 12, 1978, the decree of heroic virtue was read in the presence of Pope Paul VI. Pope John Paul II beatified Joseph Marello on September 26, 1993, in Asti, and pointed him out as an example of charity, of untiring and silent work for youth and the abandoned, and as a model for all pastors of the people of God.

Then by a solemn decree on December 18, 2000, the pope declared that the miracle worked by God through the intercession of Joseph Marello had been verified: namely, the sudden, complete and enduring recovery of the children Alfredo and Isilia Chávez León, who were both restored to health at the same time from broncho-pulmonitis, a sickness accompanied by high fever, dyspnoea and cyanosis in patients, and usually caused by chronic malnutrition.

After the recognition of this miracle, Pope John Paul II, on March 13, 2001, during a public ordinary consistory for the canonization of the Blessed, solemnly pronounced:

"By the authority of Almighty God, of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul and of Our own, We declare that: ...the Blessed Joseph Marello... be inscribed in the Album of Saints on 25th November 2001".