(OSV News) ─ It was a typical fall day like any other in 2011 when Marco Gallo, a 17-year-old from northern Italy, rode his scooter to school.
The past month had been a difficult time, marked by a heightened awareness on the frailty of human mortality. The tragic deaths of Italian professional motorcycle racer Marco Simoncelli, who died in an accident during the 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix, as well as the death of an acquaintance prompted an existential reflection in the young teen.
After a minor accident involving a schoolmate who had slipped and fallen, Marco wrote to one of his friends: "Can you imagine? It could have happened to me," and he added, "Life is short, it can't be wasted."
On the evening of Nov. 4, 2011, he decided to write his final reflection on the recent events on the wall of his room.
The following day, as he rode to school, he was struck by a vehicle and died.
Marco's mother, Paola Cevasco, recalled discovering the words he had etched on the wall in big letters right next to the San Damiano cross that hung in his room: "Why do you seek the living one among the dead?"
The words, taken from the Gospel of Luke, were said by angels to the women who found the empty tomb.
For Cevasco, the words written by her son offered a comforting reminder amid her and her family's grief that death does not destroy everything.
"He had big questions on what God wants to tell us. And that's why he wrote it. He was conscious that the question of what is life, what is death, was truly gigantic," Cevasco told OSV News March 19.
"It was the same question that those women who went to the sepulcher had. The word, the central point, the focus is that this life doesn't end. Death does not destroy everything," she said.
His inquisitiveness, his devotion and participation in the sacraments, and the example of his spiritual life prompted the Archdiocese of Milan in March to initiate the diocesan phase of his sainthood cause.
The edict declaring the opening of his cause noted that Marco "loved life, asked many questions, and above all, found the source of true joy in his love for Jesus and his neighbor."
"For this reason, he left a deep conviction of his sanctity in all who knew him," the edict proclaimed, adding that the teen's reputation for sanctity, had only "strengthened over the years."
Born in 1994, Marco grew up in a close-knit family that was active in the Church; his parents were members of Communion and Liberation, a Catholic lay movement where members seek to discover Christ's presence in all aspects of life.
Cevasco said she and her husband, Antonio Gallo, saw their faith as "a fulfillment of our humanity, something beautiful, the 'hundredfold' that the Lord promises in this life, which is so fascinating. And, to be honest, something that involves suffering as well."
However, they did not seek to impose their faith on Marco or his two sisters, Francesca and Veronica, because "if God created us free, how could we impose it ourselves?"
Like his sisters, she noted, Marco was someone who always asked questions "but never in an intrusive way."
"He wasn’t someone who overwhelmed people; he respected them, he valued them. He might spend an afternoon playing with you, and then afterward he would get to what he called 'the heart of the matter,'" she said.
Cevasco told OSV News that from a young age, Marco had always been "a bit different" and that he "had a very marked sensitivity."
"One thing that always struck me was that he didn’t seem very interested in conversations. In that sense, he was, you might say, very typically male. He often kept to himself," she said. "However, if something happened -- if there was some tension, or if something meaningful was being said -- even from another room, he would pick up on it and step in. In other words, he was attentive."
For her, Marco's need to observe and his search for "something meaningful and true" helped him to "deepen his spiritual search."
In hindsight, Cevasco said she really noticed his search for a profound spirituality when he was 15. He handed her a paper with a reflection on a Church hymn, "Io non sono degno" ("I am not worthy").
"I am not worthy of what you do for me. You who love one like me so much; see, I have nothing to give to you, but if you want it, take me," the song reads.
When he gave her that reflection, she told OSV News, "that's when I realized there was truly something there."
That reflection, which Cevasco said he wrote when he had started studying philosophy, began with the words: "I am 15 years old, and I am writing this for myself and for all young people my age."
In it, he wrote "that in life ultimate questions often arise, and he analyzes what can also be the desire to try things, to do things, to distract oneself, what he called 'the idol of Saturday night.' And he explains how, when it passes, it leaves you with an even greater bitterness," the mother recalled.
After his death, his family was able to find more of his writings on his "search for happiness" and compiled them in a book titled, "Anche i sassi si sarebbero messi a saltellare" ("Even Stones Would Have Started Skipping.")
"He wanted to live his life fully for himself, he wanted to find joy and what he had discovered, he couldn't bear for others not to know," Cevasco told OSV News.
That search for true happiness was something he carried with him, literally, till the end of his short life. Among the items found in his wallet after his death were an image of Our Lady of Medjugorje and a note.
"Today I promise that, with a very great desire and with constant strength, as if it were the last day of my life, in choosing to whom to give my day and my life, I will open myself to the search for the Mystery, with judgment and with respect for what reality sets before me, even when it is difficult. From the Mystery alone I depend," the note read.
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Junno Arocho Esteves is an international correspondent for OSV News. Follow him on X @jae_journalist.
