Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati – who on Sept. 7 will become one of the first saints canonized by Pope Leo XIV – now has a special connection to Washington, D.C.
On Aug. 9, Washington Auxiliary Bishop Juan Esposito blessed the new parish offices and the Frassati Chapel at Immaculate Conception Parish in Washington. The parish, which has become a haven for young adult Catholics in the nation’s capital, now has a chapel for prayer and Eucharistic Adoration named for a young adult Italian Catholic who died a century ago and who was known for his devotion to the Eucharist and his service to those in need.
“Our new Frassati Chapel provides many hours each week of Eucharistic Adoration in a safe, secure and sacred space for Catholics in the city. This chapel will transform our parish. It is already happening,” said Father Charles Gallagher, the pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish.
The ornate, intimate chapel, which is believed to be one of the first Adoration chapels in the Americas named for Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, is located next to the Immaculate Conception parish office at 1338 8th Street, N.W., in Suite 101, in an apartment building down the street from the church and rectory.
The Frassati Chapel – which will be known as the St. Pier Giorgio Frassati Chapel after the canonization – is open many hours every day for private prayer, and for select hours of Eucharistic Exposition during the week.
As he blessed the chapel, Bishop Esposito prayed, “Through our adoration of your Son present in the Eucharist, lead us to a closer union with the mystery of redemption.”
Blessing the parish office – where Father Gallagher provides spiritual guidance and marriage preparation and where the parish’s administrative assistant works – the bishop prayed, “As we bless this parish office, grant to your servants who will work here and those who will enter here these blessings: to listen to you in faith, to speak to you in prayer, to seek only you in their work, to find you in all they do, and to be witnesses of the Gospel. Through them, spread the good news of Christ everywhere…”
The chapel includes a striking portrait of the new saint provided by a priest friend of Father Gallager, Father David Nerbun, the pastor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati Parish in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which in 2023 became the first parish in the United States named for him. A second-class relic of Blessed Pier Giorgio – a piece of leather from his clothing – is in the chapel for public veneration.
At the blessing, Father Gallagher noted that Pope St. John Paul II – who beatified Blessed Pier Giorgio in 1990 and named him as a special patron of World Youth Day – called him the “man of the Beatitudes” because he “showed us what it means to live out the full spectrum of the Gospel. All Christians in the capital city can look to him as a friend and intercessor.”
Immaculate Conception’s pastor also noted that the chapel designed by McCrery Architects of Washington includes elements inspired by the parish’s church – “the central arch is based on the high altar, the fleur-de-lis extends the Marian theme from the church to the chapel… the arch of the altar, the wooden panels and the grills are based after the ones in the church, (and) the image on the front of the tabernacle features Mary and Gabriel at the Annunciation and calls to mind all the angel statues in the church.”
He also pointed out how the chapel includes an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, “a constant theme in the church,” and also an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patroness of the Americas, who “brings her maternal warmth to this new location.”
After the blessing of the new chapel and parish office, Bishop Esposito commended Father Gallagher for the parish’s outreach to Catholic young adults in the city. “I have no doubt that the beautiful Frassati Chapel has already begun to bear fruit,” he said.
A new chapel and a saint’s legacy
Afterward, Immaculate Conception parishioners and staff members reflected on the new chapel and on the legacy of its patron saint.
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati had a deep devotion to the Eucharist. He went to daily Mass and participated in monthly nocturnal Eucharistic Adoration, and he encouraged his friends to join him at Holy Hours. He was an avid skier and mountain climber. As a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, he served the poor and the sick, and he died at the age of 24 in 1925 after contracting polio, possibly from one of the people he assisted. On a photo of what turned out to be his last mountain climb, he wrote the phrase “Verso L’Alto,” Italian for “to the heights,” which has been seen to encapsulate his outlook on living his life, and his faith, to the fullest.
Erin Donn – a former parish missionary at Immaculate Conception who now serves in campus ministry at Elizabeth Seton High School in Bladensburg, Maryland – said, “I think for young adults, he’s just a really good model for balancing a life of charity and service in the midst of your ordinary, everyday life.”
She noted how special it is now to have an Adoration chapel in the city, “to just be able to come and walk over, it’s just really a good gift to the neighborhood.”
That point was echoed by Melissa Coughlin, an Immaculate Conception parishioner for nearly 20 years who noted that when she first moved to the area, she lived nearby.
“Walking past the church every day was the pull I needed to come back to the faith,” said Coughlin, a physician scientist who has been involved in the parish’s young adult outreach.
Reflecting on the new Frassati Chapel there, she said, “Being able to come here and pray at any time will be a massive asset both to Immaculate Conception Parish and to the Catholic community in D.C.” Coughlin said the chapel, in the spirit of Blessed Pier Giorgio, “truly allows people to take their faith to the heights.”
Sylvia Kryszczuk, who recently served as a parish missionary at Immaculate Conception, said Father Gallagher established that ministry because a lot of young adults in the city feel alone and are looking for friendship. “There’s a great need to accompany people,” she said. Part of her work, she said, involved helping to fortify the spiritual and prayer life of parishioners.
She noted the sacrifice, prayer and work that parishioners offered to help make the Adoration chapel a reality there. “We are in the nation’s capital, and it’s the first of its kind (here) where people can come and spend time with the Lord whenever they wish,” she said.
Blessed Pier Giorgio is a perfect patron saint for the chapel, she said, adding that she hoped that young adults in the parish “will become very bold in living out their belief in God in a very intentional and zealous way, like Frassati did.”
Savannah Kleeman, who began working as a parish missionary at Immaculate Conception in August, said the chapel’s patron saint is a role model for young adults.
“I love the quote, ‘to the heights.’ It’s what young Catholic adults are striving for, to go to the heights of their faith,” she said. Kleeman added that drawing closer to Christ through Eucharist Adoration can provide people with “a mountaintop experience.”
Natural virtue, supernatural grace
Before the blessing of the new chapel, Father Gallagher noted that Blessed Pier Giorgio “has been one of the most important saints in my life.” As an eighth grader at St. Mark the Evangelist Parish in Hyattsville, he heard that Frassati loved sports and loved being outside, two interests that he shared as a youth, so he picked “Pier Giorgio” as his Confirmation name.
“As I grew older, I got to see his great spiritual depth, and his mystical life of prayer,” the priest said in a later interview. He added, “Sometimes you don’t feel like you choose a saint you like. They choose you. I really feel like that with Frassati.”
On a prayer card for Blessed Pier Giorgio, he saw an email address on the back and contacted a person who turned out to be the future saint’s niece, Wanda Gawaronska, who is now 99. Later while he was studying in Rome as a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Washington, he got to join her at dinner with other seminarians.
Meeting a saint’s family member “gives you a real living personal connection,” said Father Gallagher, who said that encounter underscored that Frassati was a real man, and gave him access to his humanity.
One of the most appealing things about Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, he said, is that he was an extraordinary man, but also very ordinary, whose natural qualities were “enhanced with supernatural grace.”
Another thing that the priest admires about him “is the apostolate he did among his friends… That was a great legacy of Pope Francis, he talked about accompanying people, walking with them.”
The future saint “was a loyal friend” and a joyful man, Father Gallagher said, adding, “Because he was a man of a deep interior life, he was able to bring out the best in others.”
The priest noted how Frassati would play pool with friends, and say that if he won, they had to join him at Holy Hour. His devotion to the Eucharist “was the engine, the heartbeat of his interior life,” Father Gallagher said. “…He’s a model of how to live one’s faith in a way that is really very natural and attractive.”
In addition to his devotion to the Eucharist, Frassati’s “robust ministry to the poor and those in need shows it’s so worth it to generously live our lives in service to our Lord and his Church,” the priest said.
Immaculate Conception’s pastor is going to Rome to attend Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati’s canonization and will be joining other priests in concelebrating that Mass and plans to visit sites in Italy associated with his life.
Back home in Washington, Father Gallagher is convinced that the chapel named for the future saint will transform his parish, that neighborhood and the city.
“Whenever a parish has real devotion to Eucharistic Adoration and has an Adoration chapel, God blesses that parish with special graces,” he said, noting that young adults are already praying in that chapel throughout the day and at night. “…You feel there’s a real grace now, in that God is using this to set hearts on fire and to help people to really pray better and pray more.”
