Mother
Maria Crocifissa was born Paolina Francesca di Rosa, the sixth of nine
children of Clement di Rosa and the Countess Camilla Albani. The di
Rosas were a wealthy family of Brescia, Italy.
Losing her mother
to a terminal illness at age eleven, her education was entrusted to the
Visitation Sisters. At seventeen Paolina left school to assist in the
running of her father’s estate and household. To these duties she soon
added the care and spiritual welfare of the girls working at her
father’s mills and other factories in the city. She also founded a
woman’s guild and arranged retreats and special missions. When the
cholera epidemic devastated Brescia in 1836, she and a widow, Gabriela
Bornati, served the victims in the hospital with such dedication that
Paolina was next asked to undertake the supervision of a workhouse for
penniless girls, which she did for two years.
She continued to
engage in social work, always giving signs of ability and a
perspicacious intelligence with a surprising grasp of theology. In 1840,
with Gabriela Bornati, she started a congregation with the purpose of
serving the ill and suffering in hospitals. Taking the name of Handmaids
of Charity, they started with four members and soon grew to number
twenty-two.
The name she took upon her profession of religious
vows was a synthesis of her whole life: Maria Crocifissa. Her spiritual
life was firmly grounded on the imitation of Christ’s suffering on the
Cross. This was the foundation of her life, her teaching and her
contemplation. Her love for Christ Crucified was reflected in her
unstinting and total dedication to the suffering members of his Mystical
Body.
As the community expanded, Clemente di Rosa provided a
commodious house in Brescia, and their rule of life was provisionally
approved by the bishop in 1843. Anticipating Florence Nightingale by
several years, the Handmaids of Charity ministered to the wounded in the
war which ravaged the region in 1848. After a meeting with Blessed Pope
Pius IX in 1850, the constitutions of the Handmaids of Charity of
Brescia were approved.
A second cholera epidemic hit northern
Italy and pushed the growing order to its limit. After a flurry of
foundations in Spalato, Dalmatia and Verona, Mother Maria collapsed, and
was brought home to Brescia to die. She passed away peacefully on
December 15, 1855 at the age of forty-two.
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
St. Mary di Rosa
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