Brescia-born Ludovico Pavoni, founder of “frati operai”, and Solomon Leclercq, martyr during the French Revolution, will be saints soon. Yesterday (9th May), Pope Francis gave private audience to cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, authoring the congregation to issue the decrees for acknowledging the miracles attributed to two blessed souls as well as that which acknowledges the heroic virtues of the Servant of God, Raffaele Emanuele Almansa Riaño (1840-1927), a diocesan priest, formerly a professed monk of the Order of Friars Minor.
The blessed Ludovico Pavoni (1784-1849), a priest, since the very first time after his ordination had spent his life in busy catechistic efforts, which in 1821 would result in the foundation of an art college (“Collegio d’arti”) called “Pio Istituto S. Barnaba”; he also founded the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception. Solomon Leclercq (his real name was William-Nicholas-Louis, 1745-1792), of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, was instead the first Lasallian to be martyred during the persecution against the Catholic Church in the years of the French Revolution. Arrested on 15th August 1792 and closed in the Carmelite convent of Paris with many of his mates, he was killed on 2nd September. In 1926 he was beatified by Pope Pius IX along with a group of 191 victims of the September massacres.