Paolo Francesco Danei was born in Ovada, a small town in the Alessandria area, in Piedmont, and was the first of 16 children who brightened the home of a family of noble origins, but in economic difficulty.

From an early age he showed a great interest in religion and a very solid faith, nourished by daily participation in Mass, frequenting the Sacraments and the continuous practice of prayer, but to help the family he began to work with his father. His vocation, however, took him elsewhere.

In 1713 something happened in the life of Paolo Francesco and he decided to live as a hermit monk, even though he did not belong to any Order. At the age of 26, the bishop allowed him to settle in a cell behind the church of Castellazzo Bormida. Here he developed the idea of ??founding a new Congregation, called the Poor of Jesus. Inside the cell, for over a year, he committed himself to writing the Rule which would be inspired by love for the Cross. This, in fact, would be the typical spirituality of the religious men that Paolo would guide: in an era of weak faith, embracing the most unpopular choice, the one that passes through the cross and sacrifice. He began to call himself "Brother Paolo of the Cross" and to help the poor and sick in whom he was able to contemplate the face of Jesus crucified.

Finally in 1727 Benedict XIII authorized Paul to gather around him some companions to help him. The first was his blood brother, John the Baptist: the two were ordained priests in the same year. Thus was born the first nucleus of the Order of the Discalced Clerics of the Holy Cross and the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, later called Passionists. At the base was a radical belonging to the cross of Jesus and the concept that His Passion was not only an inevitable prerequisite for redemption from sin, but "the maximum expression of God's love for man". The first religious were trained as preachers: they would not fight the Turks with weapons, but with the word they would defeat ignorance, irreligion and abandonment of the Gospel.

Paul of the Cross spoke and wrote a lot: perhaps ten thousand letters or more; his preaching during the Jubilee of 1750 is historic. His life, however, was spent largely in solitude, in the retreat on Monte Argentario where he moved and where he founded the first convent. From here he left for missions directed to the poorest areas of the Maremma and to the most remote islands of the Tuscan archipelago where it is difficult to make the Word of God penetrate.

In 1771, thanks to the collaboration of Mother Crocefissa Costantini, she founded the female branch of the Congregation in Tarquinia: the cloistered nuns who would become the Passionist Sisters of Saint Paul of the Cross, a congregation of apostolic life consecrated to the educational mission, especially of women who were victims of violence and exploitation. Paul died in Rome in 1775; he was canonized by Pius IX in 1867. https://www.causesanti.va/it/santi-e-beati/paolo-della-croce.html