Today, December 15, is the memorial of Saint Maria Crocifissa di Rosa.
Foundress of the Handmaids of Charity.
She was born Paolina Francesca di Rosa in 1839 in Brescia, Italy. She came from a wealthy family, with her father the famous industrialist Clement di Rosa and Countess Camilla Albani.
When Paolina was 17, her mother died. She gave up school to help manage her father’s properties and estate. She knew she had a religious vocation, so she turned down many admirers and suitors.
During the cholera epidemic of 1836, she worked in the hospital in Brescia. She founded a home for girls and began another residence for deaf and mute young ladies.
In 1840, at age 30, she became superior of a community that evolved into her congregation the Handmaids of Charity. She took the name, Maria Crocifissa di Rosa. The chief apostolate of the Handmaids of Charity nuns was the care of the poor, the sick and the suffering. She once said, “I suffer from seeing suffering.”
Maria died at a Brescia hospital in 1855 after a lingering illness. Pope Pius XII beatified Maria in 1940 and canonized her in 1954.