BlessedJamesAlberione Founder of the Pauline Family and the Daughters of St. Paul
By Sr. Kathryn JamesHermes, FSP
On November 26, 1971, journalists and news reporters scrambled to cover the death of an 87-year-old, frail, halfbent priest who in his life had been almost awkward in public and reluctant to speak of what he had done. The priest was Father James Alberione. Somesaid he was an apostle and a pioneer, others a saint and genius of our time. He had founded two Congregations, one of men and one of women, to use the media for evangelization fifty years before the Church herself adopted the instruments of social communication as a means for promoting the Gospel message. He and his followers had built an "empire" out of paper for the salvation of the men and women of today. Always intent on scrutinizing the signs of the times, he had given to the Church new means by which to express itself. Paul VI had visited his bedside an hour before his death, stopping his work to acknowledge the founder’s passing. The tribute that probably meant the most to him was: "Alberione diffused twenty million copies of the Bible throughout the world!" But to the thousands of members of the five religious Congregations, four Secular Institutes and the association of Pauline Cooperators he left behind, Father Alberione could be nothing other than father and founder. A charismatic and prophetic leader, Alberione believed, even from the first inspiration as he knelt in Eucharistic adoration, that God willed the work which he began.