Salvo D'Acquisto

Venerable Salvo D'Acquisto (1920-1943) was a member of the Italian Carabinieri during the Second World War.

• One must resign oneself to the will of God at the cost of any pain and any sacrifice.
  • From a letter addressed to his mother, quoted in L'eroismo della carità, Bollettino Salesiano, February 2004, p. 18.

• If I die for another hundred, I will be reborn another hundred times: God is with me and I am not afraid!
  • Quoted in Barbara Conti, Castel Giuliano, commemorazione per Salvo D'Acquisto, Lagone.it, 21 October 2013.

• (To the twenty-two civilians sentenced to death by firing squad) You only live once, you only die once.
  • L'eroismo di (Salvatore) Salvo D'Acquisto..., Leonardo.it

• [He stands out for his innate need] to help others, combining his early feelings of adoration for God and affection for his fellow man with the traditional qualities of a police officer: love of country, courage, spirit of sacrifice and sense of duty.
  • Filippo Caruso, quoted in Carmine Di Biase, L'eroismo della carità, Bollettino Salesiano, February 2004, p. 18.

• The history of the Italian Carabinieri shows that the heights of holiness can be reached in the faithful and generous fulfilment of the duties of one's state. I am thinking here of your colleague, Sergeant Salvo d'Acquisto, awarded a gold medal for military valour, whose cause of beatification is under way.
  • Pope John Paul II, Address of John Paul II to the Italian Carabinieri who serve in the Lazio region, 26 February 2001.

• To fully understand Salvo D'Acquisto, we must retrace the path of his upbringing, first his childhood in the reassuring circle of his family, then his professional life: a wealth of moral notions, religious precepts and edifying examples is the solid foundation on which his character was built. It is in his genuine popular faith and pride in belonging to the Carabinieri that we must seek the stimulus, the spiritual detonator of his sublime gesture, which synthesises two forms of heroism that are only apparently distant but both attributable to the voluntary offering of life: the secular heroism of the soldier and the heroism of the Christian martyr. Yet, how natural was that supreme decision, dictated by a force that was not at all mysterious, reminding him of the simplest and most arduous of a soldier's duties: a sense of responsibility towards himself. Aware that he and no one else was the representative of the state, he and no one else the guarantor of a public service whose purpose was order and justice, he did not shirk these duties and paid the price personally. More than anyone else, therefore, Salvo D'Acquisto became the perfect symbol of the spirit of sacrifice and dedication of the Carabinieri, a symbol that in the collective imagination of our people identifies the legendary history of the Benemerita.
  • General q:it:Luigi Federici, quoted in in Salvo D'Acquisto la "Perla di Palidoro", montelibretti.info.