Paolo Francesco Danei, from Piedmont, was born in 1694. When he was nineteen, while listening to a sermon, he felt a deep inner fire that he himself called a “conversion.” Wanting to fight for Christ, he volunteered for the Venetian army that was being raised to battle the Turks, but he left when he realized that the battles he was called to were of a different kind.
At twenty-six, he received from the bishop of Alessandria the black habit of penance and wrote the rule for what would become his congregation. He convinced his brother John Baptist to join him, and together they went to Monte Argentario (Orbetello) to live as hermits. On feast days, however, they would go down to the towns to preach—especially about the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Pope Benedict XIII gave them permission to establish the new congregation and personally ordained them as priests. The first Passionists combined a life of solitude with active ministry. Paul became a friend of the popes—later in life Clement XIV would call him “il mio babbo” (“my father”)—and they approved the rule he had written for his congregation, though in a milder form since the original was very strict. He also founded a community of women alongside the men’s congregation.
Paul died at the age of eighty-one in Rome, in the house of Saints John and Paul, the general headquarters of the Passionists, on October 18, 1775. He was canonized on June 29, 1867, by Pope Pius IX. His feast was once celebrated on April 28.
