Paolo Danei, who at the time of his religious profession took the name “of the Cross”, to underline his radical belonging to the crucified Christ, was a man with an imposing appearance, an extroverted character or, as his contemporaries defined him, “sanguine”, but with a very sensitive soul.
He was born in Ovada (Alessandria) on 3 January 1694 into a family of merchants. The family environment had a strong and lasting influence on his education. The father, Luca, and the mother, Anna Maria, had a total of fifteen children, only six of whom survived.
From his parents Paolo learned to maintain serenity and know how to instil it around himself. The family moved first to Tremolino, then to Castellazzo, always in the Alessandria area. He was not yet twenty years old when he had an intense and decisive interior experience of God as love and mercy, which made him see his life in a totally new way.
He later wrote about it, saying he “only then began to truly know God.” This experience marked the beginning of a profound inner transformation.
The renunciation of inheritance and marriage
He developed the desire to offer his life for the faith, and thought of enlisting in the army that the Republic of Venice, following the invitation launched by Clement XI in 1715, was gathering for a war against the Turks. But before leaving he understood that he was not called to the armed defense of the Church. Having returned to his family in Castellazzo, he renounced an inheritance offered to him by a priest uncle and the proposal of a convenient marriage.
Instead, he progressively felt the call to found a congregation centered on the memory of the Passion of Christ, seen as “the greatest and most stupendous work of divine love”. Paul did not conceive the Passion “negatively”, that is, solely as a necessary consequence and reparation for sin: instead, the positive value of the Passion as the maximum expression of God’s love for man was particularly clear to him.
He consulted the bishop of Alexandria, Francesco Arborio of Gattinarawho was convinced of the validity of his vocation, but ordered him to retire for forty days in the church of San Carlo di Castellazzo, to write down his spiritual experiences in that period and to write a Rule for the planned congregation. His spiritual diary reveals a good part of the experiences he lived at that time.
In those days of discernment imposed on him by the prelate, Paul understood Jesus as a gift from the Father, and from this understanding was born in him the commitment, expressed by a vow also made by his religiousi, to live the memory of what Jesus did and suffered for man, and to promote it among people through life and apostolate.
In 1737 he founded the Passionist community on Monte Argentario
From then on his program will be to announce the love of God revealed in the Passion. It was not yet clear to him, however, where he could start the congregation. He wandered for some years in various areas of central and southern Italy.
In 1727 he was ordained a priest in Rome by Pope Benedict XIII, who already two years earlier had encouraged him to persevere in his vocation. In 1737 on Monte Argentario (Grosseto), then included in the State of the Presidi, a Passionist community began permanently with the construction of the first convent, which he called “retreat” to indicate the solitude in which the religious would have to live, in order to favor prayer and study intended to make them become good preachers and spiritual directors.
The Rule combined the exercise of charity expressed in preaching to the populations through the missions to a very austere life of prayer, silence and penance.
On 15 May 1741 Benedict XIV gave the first approval to the Rule of the new institute, and on 11 June Paul with six companions made his public profession, taking the name “of the Cross” and beginning to wear on his chest the distinctive sign of the Passion, a heart with the name of Jesus surmounted by a cross.
With the Marquise Frescobaldi Capponi he founded the Passionist Sisters
In the following years he continued his activity as an itinerant missionary, tirelessly traveling through the towns and cities of northern Italy. He favored the most needy people from a religious and spiritual point of view, especially those confined to the unhealthy areas of the Maremma, to the small islands and countryside. The apostolic service took the form of preaching and spiritual direction to a large number of people.
Paul wanted to convince people, even the less educated, to dedicate themselves to prayer and meditation, convinced that he was thereby helping them to become more aware of their dignity through the memory of the personal love of Jesus.
In 1769 the congregation had legal stability thanks to the definitive approval of Pope Clement XIV. In 1771 Paolo della Croce, who had long been thinking of a community of women who lived the same charism, founded in Tarquinia, with the collaboration of Mother Crocefissa Costantini, the first monastery of cloistered Passionists.
From this community developed in 1815, thanks to the Marquise Maria Maddalena Frescobaldi Capponi, the Passionist Sisters of Saint Paul of the Cross, a congregation of apostolic life, dedicated to the educational mission, with particular attention to women marked by various forms of violence and exploitation.
Paul of the Cross died in Rome on October 18, 1775. At his death the congregation was now a reality in the Church and had twelve “retreats” with 176 religious. After the crisis of the Napoleonic period, the Passionists began to expand in Italy and Europe, carrying out an intense missionary commitment. The canonization processes ended in Rome in 1803. The beatification took place on 2 August 1852 and the canonization on 29 June 1867.