Alberic Crescitelli

Infobox Saint
name=Alberic Crescitelli
birth_date=birth date|1863|6|30|df=y
death_date=death date and age|1900|7|21|1863|6|30|df=y
feast_day=22 July and 28 September as one of the Martyrs of China
venerated_in=Roman Catholic Church


imagesize=
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birth_place=Altavilla, Italy
death_place=Shanxi, China
titles=Martyr
beatified_date=18 February 1951
beatified_place=Vatican City
beatified_by=Pope Pius XII
canonized_date=1 October 2000
canonized_place=Vatican City
canonized_by=Pope John Paul II
attributes=
patronage=
major_shrine=
suppressed_date=
issues=

Alberic (Alberico) Crescitelli (1863–1900) was an Italian Catholic priest and missionary to China. Born in Italy on 30 June 1863, Father Alberico Crescitelli entered the Pontifical Foreign Missions Institute in 1880 and was ordained a priest on 4 June 1887. The following year he went to China and began work in southern Shaanxi.

Crescitelli was believed to be killed in the Boxer Rebellion. However, according to another theory, it was not the Boxers who killed Father Crescitelli—the Boxers never spread as far as Shaanxi province.

Crescitelli's confreres, who had known him well and for many years, started his beatification cause in 1908, only eight years after his death. The testimony provided by the confreres was unanimous about the holiness of Crescitelli's life.

At the Vatican, in St. Peter's Basilica on 18 February 1951, Pope Pius XII declared Alberico Crescitelli "blessed." The Pope's speech was memorable especially for the passage in which he described Father Alberico's martyrdom:

Pope John Paul II included him in the list of 120 martyrs of China canonized in St. Peter's Square on October 1, 2000.

His name in Chinese was 郭锡德 (Guo Xi-de).

External links

*" [http://www.asianews.it/recensionesanto.html Alberico Crescitelli - martire in Cina] " (Italian) - biography published 2005, Bologna (overview)

*" [http://www.hsstudyc.org.hk/Webpage/ChinaBridge/CB0407.htm Father Alberico Crescitelli a martyr to incredible and unproven accusations] "