with religious brothers to understand their experiences and to learn about religious communities. Reffo later met Leonardo Murialdo at some stage and the two co-founded the Congregation of Saint Joseph - or Murialdines - on 19 March 1873. It was on that date that Reffo and four others joined the order and made their initial religious vows. He and three others would later make their solemn religious profession on 19 September 1891. In 1892 he suffered a severe illness but recovered; this led his brother Enrico to paint an image of Saint Joseph in thanksgiving for his brother recovering. Reffo began suffering from retinal problems on 2 April 1895 which saw him start to lose his sight in his right eye. He had an operation in the hopes of treating it though some months after went blind in that eye. In 1900 he was elected as Superior General (following the death of Murialdo) but he did not accept the position (Giulio Costantino was elected instead) and instead was made the order's vicar general. Reffo became Superior General after Costantino later on 26 March 1912 and his term ended in 1919 after he went blind in his left eye in 1917 which saw him unable to manage his duties. He continued to dictate articles for the newspaper he collaborated with following his going blind and would do this until his death just under a decade later. In 1917 he allowed Giovanni Schiavo to be admitted into the order; Schiavo would later work in the missions for the order in Brazil. In 1903 he wrote a biographical account of Murialdo and a novena to Saint Joseph for the order. In 1903 he met Pope Pius X in a private audience and the pope encouraged his work. He died in mid-1925 in the Artigianelli College in Turin; his remains were exhumed and relocated in 1965 to the Santuario di Nostra Signora della Salute in Turin. Beatification process The beatification process opened in the Turin archdiocese in 1971 despite the fact that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints did not title Reffo as a Servant of God and launch the cause until 24 February 1979 when it issued the official "nihil obstat" edict (no objections to the cause). The process ended in 1981 and moved to Rome where the C.C.S. validated the process on 10 February 1995 before receiving the Positio dossier a