BIRTH HOUSE OF THE VENERABLE DON ANDREA BELTRAMI
Salesian priest
Omegna 24 June -Turin 20 December 1897
In front of you , the birth house of the venerable priest Don Andrea Beltrami, born on 24 June 1870 in Omegna, his remains rest in the sepulcher of Collegiata Sant’Ambrogio. Inside the house , some relics of the salesian priest’s bedroom are still kept today.
We draw from Saints and blessed.it website the following description:
He received from his family a deep Christian education, then developped in the Salesian boarding school in Lanzo where he entered in October 1883. Here he increased his vocation. In 1886 , he received the clerical dress from Don Bosco, in Foglizzo. During the two years ( 88-89) he spent in Turin-Valsalice, he completed the two three-year courses and concluded them with their respective degrees as home-schooled. He had the tuberculosis at a young age, but he lived his suffering with inner joy. Ordained a priest from Msgr. Cagliero, he gave all of himself to contemplation and apostolate of writing. Of unfailing will and perseverance, with a vehement desire of holiness, he spent his life in pain and neverending work. “ the mission that God entrusts to me is praying and suffering”, he used to say.
“Neither heal nor die but live to suffer” was his motto. Perfect in observance of the rule, he had a openess as a son to his superiors and a deep love to Don Bosco and the Congregation. In the last four years of his life after the priesthood, he wrote some very precious, ascetics pamphelets, but above all, he devoted himself to the agliography, writing biographies of Saints and some volumes of pleasent and educational readings. He also left other unpuiblished and unfinished works among which the Italian translation of the first volumes of the critical edition of the works of San Francesco from Sales. When he died on 30 December 1897 he was 27 years old. His body rests in the church of Omegna his native town. He has been “Venerable” since 5 December 1966.