Saint of the Day: Blessed Thomas Maria Fusco

Tommaso Maria Fusco was an Italian Roman Catholic priest who established the Daughters of Charity of the Most Precious Blood. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001, and his cause for sainthood still continues.

Tommaso Maria Fusco commenced his studies for the priesthood in 1847, and was ordained to the priesthood on December 22, 1855. He served as a parish priest and opened a school in his own home. Fusco also became a member of the Congregation of the Missionaries of Nocera in 1857, and became a traveler in the south to preach.

Fusco later established the Priestly Society of the Catholic Apostolate as a means of supporting missions, and it was to receive the formal papal approval of Pope Pius IX in 1874. He then founded the Daughters of Charity of the Most Precious Blood on January 6, 1873, and served as a parish priest in Pagani from 1874 to 1887. He wrote a number of publications on a variety of different topics that included moral theology.

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Fusco died at the beginning of 1891.

The cause for his sainthood started on a local level and spanned from April 2, 1955, to December 10, 1957. However the formal introduction of the cause came on July 31, 1981. The Positio was sent to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints so that the latter could evaluate whether Fusco lived a life of heroic virtue. Pope John Paul II approved this and declared Fusco to be Venerable on July 7, 2001, and beatified him on October 7, 2001.