Alberic Crescitelli was born on June 30, 1863, the fourth of ten children, in Altavilla Irpina in the province of Avellino and the diocese of Benevento. His father was named Beniamino, a pharmacist in the village, and his mother Degna Bruno, was a strong and deeply religious woman. On November 8, 1880, he left Altavilla Irpina for Rome where he was accepted into the Seminary of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul for the Foreign Missions, founded by the Roman priest Pietro Avanzini at the request of Pope Pius IX.
Alberic studied hard for seven years at the Pontifical Gregorian University and at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross with excellent academic and formative results. On June 4, 1887, he was consecrated a priest in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran. The following day on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity he celebrated his first Mass and wrote home: "This morning I celebrated my first sung Mass. Give me strength, God, to celebrate with fervor throughout my life." That was it.
Alberic had a constant correspondence with his family, especially with his mother: a total of 294 letters, most of them written from China. These writings remain the most familial and truest testimony of the holiness of his missionary vocation. In Rome, he was received by Pope Leo XIII and given the missionary crucifix. On April 2, 1888, he left Rome for Marseille where he boarded the Sindh steamship to China.
After 36 days at sea, the missionary landed in Shanghai. From there, he sailed on the Han River with a private boat, after leaving the Blue River, and arrived at his mission in Sijiaying (Siaochai) on August 18, 1888, after 81 days travelling by boat. The country was then the center of the mission with a remarkable and faithful Christianity, but the Vicariate of Hanzhong (southern Shensì), province of Shaanxi which is now the diocese of Hanchung and the mission site of Fr. Alberic, was almost all non-Christian with enormous social and moral problems, including opium smokers who also infected the Christian minority.
The missionary had become Chinese in clothing, allowing the barber to shave his hair and leave a tuft in the center of the scalp which then grew into a pigtail. Most importantly he had become Chinese in his heart, learning the very difficult language quickly and well. He immediately experienced hardships that he never imagined before, travelling from one part of the area to another entrusted to him by boat, by mule, on foot, or in impossible accommodations.
At the beginning of the 1900s, from the Forbidden City of Beijing where the ancient court, now the empire of the Qing dynasty resided, ordered to massacre Christians who were blamed for all obscenity. The emperor was Kuang-Hsu, but the bloody empress Tzu-Hsi held the reins of command. This was followed by massacres and destruction of churches and all the missionaries' work. Westerners were accused of provoking wars and the missionaries to fight Confucius and the old and noble Chinese traditions.
In Beijing on July 5, the decree of expulsion of all the missionaries and the invitation to Christians to apostasy in order to save their lives was issued. While Fr. Alberic was in Yanzibian, the catechumens invited him to keep safe under the protection of the authorities, but the missionary reluctantly accepted so as not to harm the catechumens themselves. But it was too late. On the evening of July 20, he fell into a trap while trying to reach the countryside. Armed with axes and knives, a bloodthirsty horde rushed to him and Fr. Alberic was struck in every way possible, dazed. Then he was transported by two men, with his hands and feet tied and suspended from a bamboo cane, to the slaughterhouse of the market where he was tortured. In the late morning of July 21, the execution was decided.
The process of canonization began in March 1910 in China. On January 18, 1951 Pope Pius XII proclaimed Fr. Alberic Crescitelli blessed as a missionary of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, which was founded by Pius XI on May 26, 1926. The Institute merged the Lombard Seminary for Foreign Missions and the Seminary of Saints Peter and Paul for Foreign Missions, which had been attended by the young Alberic. On October 1, 2000, in the Jubilee of the Year, Saint John Paul II proclaimed the heroic missionary a saint. The Pope canonized 119 other martyrs with him in Greater China. On August 23, 2003, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Benevento, Msgr. Serafino Sprovieri, elevated the parish church of Altavilla Irpina, where the martyr had been baptized, to the Diocesan Shrine to honor the Holy Pilgrim Martyrs and Alberic.