Today, May 6, is the memorial of Blessed Anna Rosa Gattorno.
Foundress of the Daughters of Saint Anne (DSA).
Rosa, born in 1831, was married at age 21 to Gerolamo Custo. From then on, she experienced financial setbacks, serious illnesses, and the death of her husband and her child.
She pondered all things and felt a call to the religious life. Not long after, Rosa was given the stigmata and the pain hit her most on the date of the death of Jesus Christ each week.
Within her vocation, Rosa interiorly understood that God willed that she found a congregation. The thought of leaving her two surviving children disturbed Rosa. Her meeting with Blessed Pope Pius IX and Saint Francesco Maria da Camporosso assured her that establishing a congregation was the right thing to do.
In 1866, along with Father Giovanni Battista Tornatore, Rosa founded the Daughters of Saint Anne, which serves the sick and the poor to this day.
She advised her sisters: “Be humble … only think that you are the lowliest and the most wretched of all creatures who render service to the Church… and have the grace to belong to her”. At her death, there were 368 houses in which 3,500 sisters were carrying out their mission.
Rosa contracted influenza and died in 1900. Pope St. John Paul beatified her in 2000 in Rome.