Michele Rua

Education Michele Rua was born in Turin on 9 June 1837 in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Turin. Rua was the last of nine children to Giovanni Battista and Giovanna Maria Rua. His father - the supervisor of a weapons warehouse - died on 2 August 1845. He lived with his widowed mother in their apartment in the warehouse which she was able to keep and where she would begin work. and visited both Algeria and Portugal in 1899. In 1900 he visited Tunisia and in 1904 visited Belgium as well as Switzerland and Poland; he later visited Malta in 1906. He visited Jerusalem and Palestine in 1908 and also to Austria. Pope Pius X asked him in 1908 to oversee the construction of a church dedicated to Santa Maria Liberatore. Death . His tenure saw the Salesian Society grow from 773 to 4000 Salesians, from 57 to 345 communities, from 6 to 34 Provinces in 33 countries around the world. ==Beatification==

The beatification process opened in the Archdiocese of Turin in an informative process that Cardinal Agostino Richelmy inaugurated on 2 May 1922 and that Cardinal Maurilio Fossati closed on 8 May 1939. Rua's spiritual writings were approved by theologians on 22 May 1935. The formal introduction to the cause came under Pope Pius XI on 15 January 1936 and Rua became titled as a Servant of God. Rua became Venerable on 26 June 1953 after Pope Pius XII confirmed his life of heroic virtue. Pope Paul VI beatified Rua on 29 October 1972 in Saint Peter's Square and during the beatification Paul VI declared: The current postulator for Rua's cause of canonization is the Salesian priest Pierluigi Cameroni. ==References==