[Calpernia]

Wow. That is the most beautiful/saddess story I've read in a while.

BUMP!

[el_chupacabra]

bump

[ninenot]

Ping

[DCBryan1]

Thanks for the good story. My blood pressure was rising rapidly at your title.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Change title to match article headline? Thanks.

[TotusTuus]

May the good Father rest in peace and be rewarded with eternal life. Prayers for him and his family.

[Coleus]

God Bless fr. Stefano Garzegno; these are the stories we seldom hear about.

[Bahbah]

Happy homecoming, Father.

[solzhenitsyn]

Now that is a man!

[Lady In Blue]

ping

[pabianice]

Could have used him as the new arch-bishop of Boston...

[VOA]

A Priest who dived into a stormy sea died after helping to save seven drowning children.

G-d's sense of irony?:
a good priest saves children from drowning at sea perishes doing his nobel deed...
while our Supreme Court makes sure a fair number of corrupt, immoral priests
are spared the proverbial millstone about the neck-and-into the sea
they deserve.

[Tribune7]

bump

[LibWhacker]

Wow, he'll be in the express line to get into Heaven.

[Barnacle]

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13

[Live free or die]

I'm guessing the Lord wanted to thank him personally as soon as possible.

[aculeus]

Here's the Telegraph's full article:


Italian priest who died as he saved drowning children hailed as hero
By Bruce Johnston in Rome
(Filed: 01/08/2003)


A parish priest who drowned after saving up to seven children from the sea was being hailed as a hero across Italy yesterday.

Padre Stefano Garzegno plunged into the Adriatic - still wearing his cassock - to rescue some of the children on a parish outing with him after they began calling for help.

The children, altar boys and choir members aged 12-14, were swimming despite rough conditions on their trip to the resort of Termoli from the inland town of Bojano.

Although the water was shallow, the area is prone to treacherous currents and the children suddenly found themselves in deeper water and being taken out to sea.

Fr Stefano, 44, who was described as an expert swimmer and a strapping man, first rescued one group of three or four children.

He then went back to get the rest, before collapsing and disappearing in the waves. When he was brought out he was already dead.

It was thought that the priest had fainted from exhaustion or suffered a heart attack due to the strain and that his lungs then filled with water.

Local people and administrators in Bojano attributed the rescue of all seven children to the priest, although some reports suggested that he saved five.

Earlier trips organised by the padre had generally been to the mountains, which were his passion. But this summer he decided to take them to the sea for the first time, saying: "We've seen enough of the mountains for a while."

Roberto Colacillo, the mayor of Bojano, where Fr Stefano had been the parish priest for little more than a year, said it was thanks to the clergyman that "seven of our children are still alive".

He had "died a true hero", he said, and would be remembered as such.

The mayor said he would declare an official state of mourning. An order of merit would also be created in the priest's honour and a street named after him.

"He was an expert swimmer, though he was out of practice," Mr Colacillo said. "When he saw the children were in trouble he did not hestitate for an instant.

"He saved seven of them and then collapsed after bringing the last one ashore." Throughout the agricultural town, which has a population of 8,500, people were in a state of disbelief at the news, talking of the priest as if he were one of the family.

The clergyman's elderly father, Pietro - who like his son is from Verona, from where he and his wife had recently moved to Bojano to be with him - described him as a "pied piper figure" for the young.

"In the year since he came to Bojano he became loved by all," a 51-year-old parishioner said.

"He was much appreciated for his work with the children. It was for them that he gave his life."

"It seems incredible that such an accident could have happened," said a 19-year-old churchgoer. "He was a powerfully built man."

In the pastry shop opposite the Sant'Erasmo church in Via Episcopio, Signora Elvira wiped away tears and said: "I last saw him the other day on his bicycle.

"But I didn't think of waving. I didn't know I wouldn't see him again.

"He was like a breath of fresh air. He was always smiling and loved the children, and above all he knew how to make them smile too."

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