Hildebrand Gregori

Venerable Abbot Hildebrand Gregori, O.S.B. Silv.
Priest and abbot
Born	Alfredo Gregori 8 May 1894 Carsoli, Province of L'Aquila, Kingdom of Italy
Died	12 November 1985 Rome, Italy
Venerated in	Catholic Church (Diocese of Rome & Order of St. Benedict)

Hildebrand Gregori, O.S.B. Silv., (8 May 1894 – 12 November 1985), was an Italian Benedictine monk, who served as the Abbot General of the Sylvestrine congregation of the Order. He was instrumental in the cae of the many orphans left in the City of Rome after the destruction of World War II. The cause for his beatification has been accepted by the Holy See, due to which he is honored as Venerable.

Life

He was born Alfredo Gregori in Poggio Ginolfo, part of the town of Carsoli in the Province of L'Aquila. As a young man, Gregori was called to enter monastic life, joining the Sylvestrines, a branch of the Benedictines. He was later elected Abbot of the Monastero Santo Stefano Protomarire in Rome, General Motherhouse of the Order.

The abbot was moved at the plight of the many orphans and street children he saw in Rome during World War II. He began to take the young boys into his own monastery to help them, and in 1942 he founded the Monastero San Vincenzo where a small community of monks cared for the boys. He envisioned, though, a community of Religious Sisters who would undertake this task.

In 1950, Gregori formed the Prayerful Sodality, which in 1977 became the Benedictine Sisters of the Reparation of the Holy Face. He directed his spiritual daughters to the "charism of reparation," understood as an act of love against the "sin of social injustice", in reference to the Holy Face of Jesus. Currently the Sisters have 14 communities in Italy, one in Poland, one in Romania, two in India, and one in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

On September 27, 2000 the 50th anniversary of the religious congregation he had founded, Gregori was honored by an official letter from Pope John Paul II to Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini.

Gregori died at his monastery in 1985.

Veneration

In 2007, the 15-year diocesan phase in the process of his beatification was completed and on that occasion, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome, called him "a contemplative monk and untiring apostle in responding to the needs of his time". He was then declared Venerable by Pope John Paul II.