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Pier Giorgio died of polio on July 4, 1925 at the family home in Turin. It has long been believed that he contracted the disease from one of his visits to the sick and poor in the city's "slum" areas. His otherwise strong and healthy body was ravaged within one week as a lethal paralysis set into his muscles and respiratory system. The details of Pier Giorgio's death are recounted by his sister Luciana in her moving book, "My Brother Pier Giorgio, His Last Days."
When his sickness began on June 29th, his parents were completely focused on the approaching death of his grandmother. He was largely misunderstood as they did not even suspect his paralysis. Even just two days before his death, his mother scolded him for not helping her with what was happening in the house for his grandmother.Although he was lying on his death bed on July 3rd, he could not forget his closest friends - the poor. It was Friday, the day he would normally visit them, and he wanted the usual material assistance to be brought to them. He asked his sister to take a small packet from his jacket and, with a semi-paralysed hand, he wrote the following note to Giuseppe Grimaldi: "Here are the injections for Converso. The pawn ticket is Sappa's. I had forgotten it; renew it on my behalf."
When the priest who was attending him asked, "What if your grandmother were to call you to heaven?", he replied, "How happy I would be." But he immediately asked, "What about father and mother?" The priest replied, "Giorgio, you will not abandon them; you will live in spirit with them from heaven. You will give them your faith and your self-denial, you will continue to be one family." These few words were enough to ease Pier Giorgio's final human concerns and he smiled, nodded his head and said, "Yes."
His earthly suffering ended at seven o'clock in the evening on July 4, 1925. His funeral was a triumph with the sight of hundreds of his poor following the coffin. Then it became known to everyone, even to his own family, who Pier Giorgio truly was."He left this world rather young, but he made a mark upon our entire century,
and not only on our century."
Pope Saint John Paul II - Rome, 20 May 1990