St Maria Bertilla Boscardin
Passages from the book:: RITRATTI DI SANTI
by Antonio Sicari ed. Java
Book
There are words from the Gospel that we
often hear and keep in our hearts but which we find hard to fully understand
and even more impossible to put into practice: “
“No; anyone who wants to
become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first
among you must be your servant…” (Matt. 20, 26-27).
With
discomfort we also read the parables of the guests who choose the first places,
while, according to Jesus, it was wise to prefer the last place, which had the
privilege of the possibility, that He who was the Master of the house, would
see us and call us to sit beside Him, just as a friend treats a friend.
For certain,
the saints obeyed this word. They searched with true humility for the last
place as slaves, in order to resemble the Lord Jesus who “came to serve and not
to be served”; and nevertheless, they almost always appear as though they were
wrapped in an aura of splendour: mighty at times in the events of their lives:
at times even in their sins from which they had to be torn from by force;
mighty for the graces by which they were filled, or the miracles that
accompanied them, or for the works they achieved in carrying out.
Some of them
even succeeded in being great in humility, in littleness, just like Saint
Theresa of Lisieux, even to the point of odium, like Saint Joseph Benedict
Labre. This is the reason why many find it hard to understand and to put into
practice what we are speaking about. What is there be said when even the last
place cannot be chosen? When it is a humiliated, daily condition, in which you
are born and in which you must abide that which ruins the normal growth of the
ego? When “feeling inferior to everyone else” is not a virtue, but a complex
that should be taken care of by the freeing arts of psychoanalysis?
In these cases
we seem to come up against a paradox. Those who are really the ‘last’, in every
sense, are not facilitated for sanctity, in fact they are unable to think or
believe it possible for them.
And since,
even thought it does not seem so, they are many who think that they are ill-treated
by life, and therefore the consequences are that many feel excluded from
sanctity rather than called to it.
The Church
preaches to it’s children about the “universal vocation of sanctity” but the
hearts of many object to this; there are conditions and conditionings, which
have their beginnings from infancy and make even a normal life impossible, not
to speak of sanctity.
On an evening
in October, 1919, Sister Maria Bertilla Boscardin, a nurse in the hospital in
Treviso, took part in the enclosure of the Carmelite Discalced of the city for
the celebrations requested by the Fathers (“tritium solemn honours” was written
on the door of the consecrated building) to celebrate a newly Beatified of
their order: Blessed Ann di San Bartolomeo, who had been secretary to the great
Theresa d’Avila.
The Church was
full of lights, ornaments and festive rites: “ let us become saints too”, whispered Sister Bertilla to her
companions, “but saints in heaven and not
on altars”.
This way she
tried to coincide with two requisites, which for her were difficult to
reconcile: her profound desire for sanctity and the consciousness of her
insignificance that could not bring her to imagine herself worthy of such
honour.
Thirty years
later and she herself will be risen to the “Glory” of Bernini.
Where saints
are concerned, the Church is not deceived by appearances and recognise them in
the figures of both Popes (Pope Pious X lived and was beatified in these years)
and in that of a humble servant nun who was a nurse.
Maria Bertilla
received this name from an Abbess who was of antique and noble origin, during
the period of the Frank, on her entering the convent. But, even this solemn
name seemed humble and ungraceful on Maria.
She had been
christened Ann Francis; in her family and town she was known as Annette.
She was born
in the small
Her mother was
a kind woman while her father was harsh and quarrelsome. His touchy character
and jealousy worsened terribly when he was drunk; he became suspicious of his
wife and covered her with rebukes, shouting and beatings.
The neighbours
heard the shouting and shook their heads; they could do nothing more than take
the child into their homes when she fled from her home terrified, she would sit
in a corner, covering her eyes with her hands..
Sometimes
Annette threw herself on her mother’s lap to protect her more than to protect
herself; other times they succeeded in escaping to the loft; once they fled on foot
towards
So the child
grew clutching to her mother, afraid of her father, used to the hard work both
in the home and fields shy, awkward, and her scholastic results were poor.
She attended
the three school classes in the village and had to repeat the first class,
which was a very strange thing even in those days.
At school and
in the village she acquired the nickname of “the goose”, and all her life this
nickname will remain with her both at home and in the convent.
If, at this
point, we imagine a dialogue, in heaven, between God and the Enemy (similar to
the tale, in which the Bible tells of Job), we would hear the voce of our “poor” faith and the doubts of which we
speak, and say to the Lord of the Universe: “Here
is a really humiliated creature, try and make a Saint of her, if you can”.
And God
accepts the challenge.
Not, however,
by taking her from that condition of Cinderella and making her hidden beauty
shine, but by simply using, as it is in His plan, those lacerations that
pedagogists and psychologists know how to foresee and describe so well.
Shy, awkward,
and apparently of no value, Annette will remain all her life, always at the
last place. It is there, at the end of the table, that Jesus looks on her with
love, as He had promised in His parable. And from there he will call her to his
Heart.
If her father
was exacerbating, and the house cold and sad, she learns from her mother to
take refuge in the small church in the village as though it were a home. She
went there every morning, very early, carrying her clogs in order not to ruin
them. There she understood what a real family was like and she felt in peace
with all, even with that father who no one understood but condemned. After all,
daddy had not a cruel heart, but it had hardened on account of his drinking
wine and the difficulties he had and at times he noticed the child who tried to
pray even at home.
When ‘he’,
will have to give evidence at the canonical trials for the beatification of his
daughter, he confesses that, sometimes, seeing the small child on her kneels in
a corner “with her hands in courtesy” (an antique way of saying “joined
hands”), a lump would come to his throat and he felt as if he was going to
choke, and he felt an urge to recite some Our Fathers.
At school no
one took any notice of her considering her to be noticeably below average in intelligence;
sometimes her homework was not corrected and her schoolmates, with the cruelty
of their age, never forget to make her aware of the fact. “I really don’t mind”,
she would answer humbly, and she truly did not feel anger or rebellion.
Only once will
the teacher and her schoolmates remain uncomfortable before her, as though in
the presence of an unknown world. During Holy Week the teacher tells the class
of the passion of Jesus and Annette, burst into tears heartbroken: “I am crying for the sufferings of the Lord,
and because men are so cruel”, the child explained in her dialect.
It is for
certain that the parish priest, having taken a more authentic and profound look
at this child, going against the opinions and to the marvel of all, he will admit
her to Holy Communion at eight and a half years old, when the authorised age in
those years was eleven.
It was the
year 1897; the year in which Theresa of Lisieux died, the saint who would
remind the Church and the enter world of the tenderness with which Gods looks
on what seems to the world to be small and weak.
At twelve
years old, the parish priest infringing the rules once again, accepts her to
join the association of the “Children of Mary”, in which the girls could join
only on having reached the age of twelve.
That saintly
priest looked at the child’s soul, he loved her and she did not seem so
ignorant to him. He gave her a catechism as a gift and he seemed to have an
intuition that she would always keep it with her and study it every day: they
found it in the pocket of her habit, when she died, at thirty-four years old.
The parish
priest was also taken by surprise when the fifteen year old girl tells him that
she wishes to consecrate her life to God, in any order, it was not important,
he could choose,
“But you are not able to do anything! The nuns would not
know what to do with you!”
“That is true, master” the girl candidly answered (in her dialect).
So he explained that it would be better if she remained at home and
gave a hand with the work in the fields.
But when the
priest was praying before the Blessed Sacrament and the things he had said did
not seem to be so obvious.
When he met
her again he asked her:
“Are you still decided on entering a convent? Tell me something: do you
know how to peel potatoes at least?”
“Oh yes, Father, I am able to do that at least”.
“Alright, you need to know nothing else”.
His rough tone was the equivalent to the gentleness of Saint Theresa of
Lisieux, who in those same years had made this observation:
“There are too many people who go before God with the pretence of being
useful to Him”.
It seems that the same conservation, between the parish priest and the
girl, was the same as the one that had been heard in
On the other
hand, the three, Bernradette, Theresa and Bertilla, really seem to be spiritual
sisters.
So she entered
the convent, convinced that they were doing her a great honour in accepting
her, an unmerited favour, and the last place for her would always be the right
one, the right one for her.
She was happy
and grateful for everything: “I will
remember that I am here thanks to a special grace, she writes her note-book,
and everything that I shall receive I
will receive it as something I am not be worthy of”.
At the
beginning her father was annoyed at the thought of having to give a few hundred
lire that were necessary for a dowry, miserable though it be, but he gave in
saying: “It must be her destiny to go
into a convent. Yes, yes, I will give her the money and let her follow he
destiny”.
Thus, twice,
this father who had not succeeded in being a good father, knows how to
pronounce a word that was full of “objective faith”: he perceived a destiny,
which belonged to his daughter and to which he gives in. Having been said by
him, it was a sullen but true acknowledgement of God the Fathers’ law and
rights.
He himself
will accompany her to the convent, pulling the cart with his daughter’s poor
dowry: an earthly picture which most surely moved our Heavenly Father, and made
this man, uncouth and of poor faith, worthy of the grace of a holy death, at an
old age, surrounded by reverence and affection, thanks to his daughter who had
become a saint.
During her
novice-ship, that which Annette, now known as Sister Bertilla, would have had
to learn by mystical practice and virtue, she already knew “naturally”.
She will have
to learn the fundamentals of all spiritual lives and all the mystics; that is:
God is All and the nullity of his creatures, on which Frances d’Assisi,
Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross and thousands of other saints, had
lengthily mediated, and will not argue or find tiring.
She will have to
practice to learn to know God and to learn to know herself (according to the
Saint Agustine’s aphorism: “Noverin Te, Domine, noverim me”, and she, unaware,
would explain to a companion that this was so obvious: “When we are humiliated, we should not loose time in pondering on the
fact, but say to the Lord: that I may know Thee, that I may know myself”.
She was really convinced of her “nullity” and that the others,
educated, capable, were all better than her and that they all had the right to
her attention and services.
She would go
to the Teacher and ask with disarming genuineness:
“I am not able to do anything. I am a poor goose. Will you teach me
what I must do? I want to become a saint”.
To us, who are careful and will fight to the end in order to maintain
the prestige we have earned, and make it a question of dignity, this could
cause us to be annoyed in seeing a creature reduced to such a degree of
humility (or perhaps of humiliation). But we must not allow ourselves to be
deceived.
With all our dignity,
we are afraid or ashamed to say that we want to become saints. She considered
it a right and a necessity.
It is as if
our pretentious dignity often guards a fragile and uncertain ‘ego’; while
Bertilla’s humility and even her auto-humiliation guarded an ‘ego’ that was
consistent and as pure as a diamond
It was her
desire for sanctity, and the certainty that it was possible even for her to
become a saint, through the grace of God, that protected her from retiring into
herself, from nervous breakdowns or existential crisis’s. It was this desire
and certainty that made her “living at the last place” evangelic.
For the same
reason, she experienced the profound beauty and truth of the words like,
“obedience”, “poverty”, “humility”, “silence”, “kindness”. It was congenial to
choose the undesirable places, the hardest work, the generous duties and never
complaining. “ I’ll do it, she so
often said, for tasks that no one else wanted to do, “I’ll do it”. It’s my duty”. Even when they did her wrong or they neglected
her; she never seethed in the offence.
At the end of
her first year as a novice she was sent to the hospital in
It was a
hospital with a lot of problems, in phases of continuos refurbishing, with
inadequate divisions and unprepared staff, a theatre of Trade Union and
political conflicts, of virulent clashes between freemasonry, socialists and
clergy, which often boomeranged back on the nuns.
In 1907, when
Bertilla, nineteen years of age, entered the hospital, three nuns were sent
away, out of spite more than for valid reasons. The newspaper Voce del Popolo, (a diocesan weekly) published
a significant paragraph: “They sent them
away. They were three angels of charity (…)who assisted the ill with maximum
care and self-denial (and…). They drove them away as if you would, thieves,
giving them eight days to find another roof and another master. The Hebrew Lord
Mayor and the freemasonry Borough Council clerks, just to please the socialist
scoundrels…they sent them away”.
This was the environment and the atmosphere.
Here she found waiting for her a Mother Superior who was efficient and
brisk who gave her a quick look, she esteemed her immediately and sent her to
the nun’s kitchen, to be a dishwasher, without the possibility of having
contact with doctors or patients. Here she will remain for a year, without
interruption, among stoves, pots and pans and the sink.
On the other hand, during her novice-ship, she wrote this prayer in her
note book of spiritual notes: “My Jesus,
I implore you through your Holy Wounds that I may die a thousand times rather than
permit that I do a single action in order to be noticed! “
Therefore she did not rebel when they confined her to this place where
there were no possibilities of being either admired or in doing anything that
was to merit the attention of others. Certainly, her heart and desire was to
look and take care of the ill, but she had been told to remain in the kitchen
and take care of the cutlery and she learned to wash plates, while praying. “My Lord, wash my soul and prepare it for
tomorrows Eucharist ”.
If she had done this complaining both with her lips and heart, then she
would had been a slave; but with that prayer, in her ‘last place’, she looked
at God and this was enough for her to feel invited to God’s altar.
After a year she was recalled to
When she became a nun having taken her vows, they sent her back again
to the hospital in
Naturally they sent her once again to the kitchen. Ten days later one
of the responsible of a very difficult and delicate division died. At first the
mother Superior dispelled the temptation of thinking of giving Sister Bertilla
this responsibility; but there was no one else. She even prayed to God to forgive
the imprudence committed, then she however entrusted the division to Sister
Bertilla.
Thus, at twenty years of age, Bertilla began her mission as a nurse.
The division was that of contagiously ill children; almost all these children
had diphtheria, they had to undergo tracheotomy or intubating, in need of
continuous assistance; a distraction could mean a child’s life.
Above all life was a continuous regime of urgency, without fixed
timetables, without any outside contacts, not even for daily mass.
We must remember that we are in an epoch in which children often arrive
from faraway towns in the middle of freezing cold nights, in serious conditions
for the septicaemia in course, in wobbling carts, cyanotic from the progressive
asphyxia, in need of the intelligent, immediate assistance of all.
It was on one hand the contact with the children, on the other the
participating in these sufferings so tragic and innocent that seem to free
Sister Bertilla of her awkwardness, all her shyness and make her “sweet”,
tranquil, serene, shrewd”, as the doctors said.
It is opportune to read the testimonies of the doctors who had her as
an assistant. Here is one: “Children are
admitted to the ward with diphtheria; they have been taken from their families
and they find themselves in such a state of agitation, of depression, so much
so that it is not easy to calm them, for two or three days they are like little
beasts, beating, boxing, rolling under the bed, refusing food. Now Sister
Bertilla succeeded in rapidly becoming a mother to them all; after two or three
hours the child, who was desperate, clung to her, calmly, as to his mother and
followed her wherever she went. The ward, under her action, presented a moving
spectacle: groups of children clinging unto her. The ward was really exemplar”.
It may only seem to be an affable picture, but then the doctors go on
describing what happened with the parents when the death of their child had to
be announced. She was the only one who was able to find the
appropriate words for their despair. The doctors themselves, moreover (the
young doctors especially who were terrorised in having to practice their first
tracheotomy), will always find her by their sides, without a sign of
nervousness or tiredness, in the most critical and agitated moments.
It even happened that when it was time to leave the hospital, the
children would cry because they had to leave her and the doctors smilingly tell
of the episode of the little girl who said she could not go away because she
had “so much affection for the nun”.
“Sister Bertilla always gave
me the impression that there was someone beside her who guided and helped her;
because a person who rises, in their mission of charity, above others, who also
live by the same laws, behave with the same tension, while not having (looking
at her materially) any quality or intelligence or culture that would make her
superior to others, she really gave the impression that she acted…as if she was
following an angel that conducted her. It is not possible for a doctor to think
of a person like Sister Bertilla, who
passes one, two, three, fifteen nights without sleep, and she presents herself
always in the same manner, neglecting herself, without signs of tiredness or
the illness that undermined her, I repeat, something inside and outside that
sublimated her..Not only, but the fact that she transited such an influence on
other, such a persuasion that is not found in other people.”.
To note that the doctor who describes her like this is a free- thinker,
a freemasonry who will convert, as we will tell further on, when he sees her
dying “full of joy”.
Sister Bertilla will spend two years with the ‘contagious’ patients,
than she will spend time in all the divisions, leaving behind her, in her fifteen
years of hospital life, the same dear and holy memory.
Another sister will tell of how at times, when the nuns were in the
refectory, and some new patients arrived. If the responsible said: “There is a patient for Sister Bertilla”,
“everyone knew that it was a poor miserable person, miserable and full of
parasites, if not tuberculosis”. She had given the others the habit of
turning to her when particularly unpleasant situations were presented, from
which not only the nurses but the hospital attendants also fled.
When the Mother Superior told her to be cautious, she answered:
“Mother Superior, I feel as
if I am serving God”, and she never avoided excessive work or defended
herself even when ill-treated by the more nervous patients. She seemed to have
no pride, but only the desire to love and serve.
In 1915 the Great War broke out, when the Piave became the most
advanced line, danger was immediate and constant: “In these times of war and terror, Sister Bertilla wrote in her
faithful note-book, “I pronounce my
“Ecce, venio!”. Here I am, Lord, to do according to your will, under whatever
aspect it presents itself, let it be life, death or terror”.
It might seem to be a nun’s pious prayer. It was a silent and heroic
choice, each time that the bombs hit the city and everyone ran to the shelters,
to remain beside the beds of the patients who could not be moved; praying and
giving glasses of
She would become pale, terrorised even more than the others would, but
she remained.
“Are you not afraid, Sister
Bertilla?” the Mother Superior would ask her.
“Do not worry, Mother” she answered, “God gives me such much strength that I do
not even feel it”.
And so they sent her to the Lazzeretto (a dependency of the hospital),
situated near a railway joint, that was mostly the object of air attacks, to
substitute a nun who could not stand the fear: “Do not think about me, Mother”, she would say to the responsible
who felt guilty about asking her to sacrifice herself, “it is enough for me to know that I can be useful”.
In 1917, after the evasion of Fruili, the hospital had to be evacuated
and the patients were divided into three groups. Sister Bertilla left with two
hundred patients for Brianza and they put the patients who had typhus in her
care. Then in 1918 they sent her to the
To tell how she lived such a Via
Crucis, would be repetitive; because the sanctity of this humble woman
consists in the continuity, never interrupting of words, gestures, attitudes,
decisions, that always went in the same direction, with that daily fidelity in
all trials, that is the greatest miracle to be seen.
We are not talking only of a post
mortem letter, or of a successive revocation, when we tend to see
everything beautiful and good.
When a chaplain lieutenant, in that same year, returned home fully
recovered, he felt it his duty to write a letter to the general Mother
Superior, to thank her “for the good work
that her Daughters were doing in that house of suffering…Among them all, he
writes, Sister Bertilla distinguishes
herself. She is occupied with the soldiers who are on the top floor of the
hotel, which has been turned into a hospital; she is all consuming in care and
charity, as a mother would for her child, a sister for a brother. The
necessities of the poor souls, certainly compassionate in their incurable
decease, where many, and the organisation of the hospital made it very
difficult to distribute what was necessary. Sister Bertilla, in order to find a
balsam for a patient would have gone through fire, she could not rest and the
number of times she went up and down those long stairs (100 steps) to the
kitchen to fetch something or another…”.
Years later in order to be more precise, he will tell of an episode
that makes us understand the charity that marvelled him.
“The Spanish influenza had
hit our hospital; the victims of this epidemic were dozens, many of whom died. The
fever, of which almost all of us were affected, rose to frightening
proportions. We slept with the windows open; these were the sanatorium orders,
and in order to moderate the coldness of the night the use of hot water bottles
was allowed. It happened on an evening in October that the boiler broke-down,
which meant that this small comfort was not possible. I cannot explain the
uproar that went on during that hour. The vice-director tried to calm the
up-roar, trying his best to make the soldiers understand that the desired hot
water was not available for everyone: and furthermore the kitchen attendants
were entitled to their rest. What a surprise for all, when late during the
night, they saw a little nun who was going around the ward, from bed to bed, giving
every patient the desired hot water bottle. She had gone to trouble of lighting
a fire in the yard and heating the water in small pots.. The morning after
everyone was talking about that nun who had come back on duty without having
rested or slept..”.
As a reward she found a meticulous superior, who was only worried that
Bertilla was too attached to her soldiers. Such care she took, seemed
excessive, certain preoccupations too involving; and her patients became too
fond of her, in her opinion, exaggerating. So she relieved her of her
responsibility in the sanatorium and sent her to the laundry, where her job was
to secrete piles of infected bed linen. Furthermore, as the superior considered
that work of little importance, every now and again she did not forget to
observe (with the cruelty of which only the mediocre are capable of, even more
than the wicked) that Bertilla “did not even earn the bread she ate”. It was
Sister Bertillas time of “passion”.
The Mother Superior went so far that Bertilla was sent back to the
motherhouse: “Here I am, Mother, she said on her arrival, “her I am a useless nun that can be of no
good to the community”.
Jesus had used the incomprehension of creatures in order to answer the
prayer that she often prayed to Him: “To
always be with you, in Heaven, I want to share all the bitterness of this
valley of tears: I wish to love you so much, by sacrifice, by the cross,
suffering”.
Who wants to escape at all costs, from sufferance, will never be able
to understand the miracle that happens when the desire to participate in
Christ’s Cross takes hold of a heart. It happens as though Jesus’ passion is
renewed for us, to save all the souls on earth. The
What she writes, during those months, in her notebook are saturated
with her love for the Blessed Virgin, it was as if She was once again with the
child and her mother under the portico of the same Sanctuary.
“Oh my dear Madonna, I do
not ask for visions, or revelations, or pleasures, or kindness, not even
spiritual ones. In this world I do not wish for anything more than that which
you wished for when you were here on earth; to believe with all my heart and
soul, without seeing, or pleasure, to suffer with joy, without consolation. To
work hard for you, until I die”.
After five months she was able to return to
Always the same goodness, the same humility, the same peace and the
same inexhaustible impulse to give, notwithstanding a visceral tumour had been
killing her for some time. She had undergone surgery at twenty years of age,
but the tumour had not stopped spreading. Then again she neglected herself,
because of a misunderstood and invincible sense of modesty
She became more and more spiritually detached from herself: “I have nothing that is my own, only my free
will, and I, with the grace of God, am ready and resolute, cost what it may, to
never do as I wish, and I do this out of pure love of Jesus, as if neither hell
or Heaven exists, or even the comfort of a pure conscience”.
Without ever suspecting, she reached summits, which only the greatest
mystics had reached.
On
The news spread through the hospital that Sister Bertilla was dying and
immediately it was a rush of the head physcian, doctors and nurses, to her
room.
“You would think she was a
saint!” said one of those sisters who had always considered her a “good for
nothing”.
Some, seeing her suffering so meekly, in tears tried to console her. “You must not cry. If we want to see Jesus,
we have to die. I am happy”.
However, she spoke in her dialect, as she had always done. “You must tell the sisters, she said to
the Mother superior, that they must work
for God because everything else is wothless, everything else is worthless”.
Zuccardi Merli, the doctor who was a free- thinker and freemasonry, of
whom we have spoken of, watched Sister Bertilla as she was dying and he felt
something change in his heart: “I can
assure, that the dawn of my spiritual change was given through the vision of
Sister Bertilla when she was on the verge of death,” he witnesses. “In fact, for her, whose hand I kissed
before she passed away, dying was so visible for everyone, a joy. She died a
death like no one else I had seen dying, like someone who is already in an
improved state of life. Oppressed by an atrociously painful ailment, bloodless,
certain she would die, in that state in which the patient usually clutches to
the doctor and asks. ‘Save me’, to hear her pronounce with a smile that I
cannot describe: “Be happy, my sisters, I am going to my God”, this was the
thing that suggested an auto criticism on my part and that now I see as being
sister Bertillas first miracle. In fact I said to myself: “This creature is as
though she was far from us, even if still alive. There is a part of her that is
material, that which remains with us, that gives thanks, that comforts those
around her; but there is a spiritual part far from us, above us, which is more
evident and domineering: the spiritual part that is already rejoicing in that
happiness that had been the yearning of her life…”.
In these words, apparently difficult and complicated, you can hear the
rationalist who has been put before the evidence of the supernatural; he who
had always denied the existence of a soul, is almost constricted to seeing it
while God retakes it and startles it with joy, and the body abandons.
Thus, this humble little nun, who everyone had considered “a poor
goose”, takes with her, in her faith, that intellectual who was so proud of his
science and his freethinking. She who dying had in the pocket of her habit a
worn-out catechism and who usually said:
“I am ignorant, but I
believe in everything that the Church believes in”.
To a nun who was questioning her on her “spiritual life”, she answered:
I do not know what it is to ‘savour the
Lord’. I am quite content by being good at washing plates and offering God my
work”. I know nothing about spiritual life. Mine is the “the way of the carts”.
She always felt the country girl who was used to country roads, roads
that lead to work, roads on which one travels without airs, pretences of
elegance or distractions.
This country girl knew how to write, in her Italian full of grammatical
errors, words full of nobleness and purity.
“God and I alone, internal
external recollection, continuous prayer, this is the air I breath;
never-ending work, diligent, but with calmness and order. I am God’s creature,
God created me and he protects me, reason wanted that I am entirely His. I seek
happiness, but true happiness I find only in God. I must do God’s will without
asking for anything in return, with no other desires, with cheerfulness and
laughter. I implore God that he may help me to win my ego, to understand what
is right and what is wrong, that He may help me to do at all costs His holy
will, without asking for anything more…..”.
When she was beatified in 1952, Pope Pious X11 said: “She is not a dismaying model …In her
humility she defined her path as ‘the way of the carts’, the most common, that of the Catechism”.