{
	"slug": "the-life-of-blessed-gabriel-of-our-lady-of-sorrows",
	"url": "https://manualistpress.com/books/the-life-of-blessed-gabriel-of-our-lady-of-sorrows/",
	"title": "The Life of Blessed Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows",
	"fullTitle": "The Life of Blessed Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows",
	"status": "published",
	"contributors": [
		{
			"name": "Fr. Nicholas Ward, C.P.",
			"role": "author",
			"url": "https://manualistpress.com/authors/nicholas-ward/"
		},
		{
			"name": "Fr. Hyacinth Hage, C.P.",
			"role": "author",
			"url": "https://manualistpress.com/authors/hyacinth-hage/"
		},
		{
			"name": "Cardinal James Gibbons",
			"role": "introduction"
		}
	],
	"summary": "A vain, quick-tempered college boy walked into a Passionist novitiate in 1856 and died a saint five years later. The men who lived with him swore to it.",
	"description": "Francis Possenti was eighteen, the son of the chief magistrate of Spoleto. He perfumed his hair, dressed in the fashion of the day, loved the theater, read novels, and lost his temper fast. At commencement, in white kid gloves and patent leather shoes, he took the gold medal before the best society of the city. The next morning he left for the Passionist novitiate. His father, a lawyer of sixty-six, had laughed when he first heard of it.\n\nHe took the name Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows and lived five more years inside the ordinary routine of a Passionist house, the midnight office, the bell, the broken bread. He died of consumption in the Abruzzi in February 1862, twenty-three years old, with a worn print of the Crucified and the Sorrowful Virgin under his folded hands. Thirty years later his bones were taken up and the cures began. In 1908 Pius X declared him Blessed.\n\nFr. Ward, a Passionist, wrote this life from the sworn depositions for the cause, most from Fr. Norbert, who directed Gabriel from his first day in the novitiate to the morning he died, so the book is specific. Fr. Norbert refuses him the penance chain and tells him the chain he needs is on his will. Gabriel’s forty resolutions are quoted, and the author suggests trying to keep one of them perfectly for a single day. Cardinal Gibbons supplies the introduction.\n\nIt is a book for a young man who wonders whether a temperament like his can be made holy, and for anyone tired of saints who were never anything else.",
	"categories": [
		"Saints and Biography"
	],
	"cover": {
		"url": "https://manualistpress.com/_astro/cover.OT3MAya6_zocVE.jpg",
		"alt": "Cover of The Life of Blessed Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, showing Blessed Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows by Professor Grandi"
	},
	"sourceEdition": {
		"title": "The Life of Blessed Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows",
		"year": 1910,
		"publisher": "H. L. Kilner & Co.",
		"place": "Philadelphia",
		"language": "English",
		"note": "Set from the 1910 edition published by H. L. Kilner & Co., Philadelphia, with the introduction by Cardinal Gibbons and all five plates."
	},
	"historicalApprovals": [
		{
			"type": "Nihil obstat",
			"name": "Jacobus F. Loughlin, S.T.D.",
			"office": "Censor Librorum"
		},
		{
			"type": "Imprimatur",
			"name": "Patritius Joannes",
			"office": "Archbishop of Philadelphia"
		}
	],
	"published": "2026-10-19",
	"updated": "2026-10-22",
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			"label": "Paperback",
			"url": "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HNM1MJCW",
			"asin": "B0HNM1MJCW",
			"isbn13": "9798163479047",
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