Feast day: 15 December
Paola Francesca Di Rosa was born on 6 November 1813 in Brescia. She was one of nine children born to the rich industrialist Clemente di Rosa and Countess Camilla Albani from the noble Albani line. She was educated by the Visitation Sisters in their convent in Brescia. In 1824, she left school when her mother died. She began working in her father’s large spinning mill in Acquafredda, where she immediately became aware of the working conditions. She became manager when she was nineteen and started to care for the material and spiritual needs of the female workers, encouraged by her father.
He began to search for a suitable husband for her but she turned every suitor down. She asked a priest for help and he informed her father that his daughter had another vocation in mind. Maria lived at home for the next decade, increasingly involved in social work. There was a cholera epidemic in 1836 and Maria went to tend the sick in the local hospital. At this time she also directed a home for mute and deaf women.
In 1840 she began gathering a small group of women that would later become a congregation. Her order became known as the Ancelle della carità (Handmaids of Charity) and she later took the name Maria Crocifissa di Rosa. Her spirituality was based on the suffering of Christ on the Cross, which led her to care for the suffering members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Her guiding motto was “Charity without limits for the sick who represent Jesus Christ”.
In 1848 she lost both her friend Gabriela and her spiritual director. Liberal Italians wanted an end to the repressive rule of the Austrians in Northern Italy. As a result, the Austrians invaded and put down the rising. Maria and her sisters went to work in a military hospital, where they tended the sick and they even went on to the battlefield to care for the spiritual and physical needs of the wounded and dying. On one occasion soldiers tried to break into the military hospital where Maria and her sisters worked. She blocked their way holding a large crucifix, with two sisters bearing candles. The soldiers withdrew, deeply ashamed.
Her order was approved by Pope Pius IX in 1850 and she was professed in 1852. She died in hospital at the age of 42 after a prolonged illness. She was canonised by Pope Pius XII in 1940.
“I suffer from seeing suffering” sums up the life of St Maria Crocifissa di Rosa.
St Maria Crocifissa di Rosa, pray for us.