Today February 1

Today is the feast of Father Louis Variara, SDB (1875 - 1923). What is unusual about him is that he only founded a WOMEN'S order (and that only more or less by accident) all the while remaining in his own order -- the Salesians -- in which he was very happy. Not an orphan, but in Don Bosco's orphanage nonetheless, he was moved to be a priest and a missionary by the example of the great saint, even though Don Bosco was quite old at the time. He didn't even SAY anything to Louis -- he just looked at him, but it was enough. Louis entered the novitiate in Italy and, moved by an appeal from a Salesian in Colombia, offered himself as a missionary at a leper colony in Agua de Dios there. After a long, hard journey by boat, train and finally mule, he began work at the colony. He started an orphanage for boys (who, for the most part, had living parents, who had been forcibly separated from them) and taught them to play musical instruments. He didn't hesitate to put his lips on mouthpieces that only seconds before were in the mouths of the little leper boys. They spent many long hours blowing away with their last strength into the instruments. But slowly, gradually, the nature of the place changed: it became lighter, brighter, and more cheerful.

One dark spot was the frustration of some of the girls who, because of their illness, were not allowed to serve God as sisters. Father Louis came up with the seemingly no-brainer of starting a new order just for them. You wouldn't believe the static he drew, even from priests and prelates. But eventually he got his permission for the establishment of the Daughters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who would work among the lepers themselves. Father Louis was called away from the community to Venezuela and the sisters missed him terribly, but he was obedient and he went. He cheered them up by saying, "What, therefore, could you have to complain about if sickness does not separate you from God, but rather brings you closer to Him? What does the rest matter?" He developed kidney and urinary disease in the harsh conditions in Venezuela and died soon after. But his Daughters carried on and grew in numbers and now include both lepers and non-lepers in various countries among the poorest of the poor. Father Louis Variara, pray for us.