Saint Maria Bertilla Boscardin

She was born Anna Francesca Boscardin at Brendola, near Vicenza, on October 6, 1888, into a poor family of farmers. ²³⁵ Pius XII, speaking about her the day after her beatification, called her Annetta and placed her among the humble peasants of Italy alongside John Bosco, Giuseppe Sarto and Maria Goretti. ⁷

Home was hard. Franciscan Media says she grew up in fear of her father, a violent man prone to jealousy and drunkenness. ⁴ Faith Magazine says that when he drank he could become so violent that the family had to flee the house. ⁵ The New Catholic Encyclopedia says only that she suffered because of his excessive drinking. ³ John XXIII, in the Italian part of his canonization homily, acknowledged that things in her family were not always peaceful and that tears and discouragement often weighed on her as a child, and he spoke of a believing mother as what carries a family through such trials. ⁶ Pius XII also credited the example of a deeply Christian mother. ⁷

Her schooling was cut short so she could help at home and in the fields, Franciscan Media says, and she showed few talents and was often the butt of jokes. ⁴ The encyclopedia describes her as diligent but slow to learn, and records the nickname the other children gave her: "the goose." ³

What she did grasp was the catechism. John XXIII said the one book she treasured was the catechism her parish priest had given her, which she read over and over once the housework was done, and which she taught to girls her own age. ⁶ Pius XII put her teaching it to others at about the age of ten. ⁷

He also told what became of the book. When the war forced her to leave Treviso, he said, she took none of her own things and asked only to bring her catechism. After her death the superior general had her worn habit changed for a new one, and the little book was found in its pocket, where it had stayed with her to the end. ⁷

In 1901, the encyclopedia says, she took a private vow of virginity. ³ With her parish priest's help she was accepted by the Teachers of Saint Dorothy, Daughters of the Sacred Hearts, at Vicenza: in 1905 by the encyclopedia's and the Dicastery's date, in 1904 by Franciscan Media's. ²³⁴ Faith Magazine says she was 16. ⁵ Pius XII told the pilgrims that on the day her parents brought her to the convent she went straight to the altar and knelt without a word. ⁷

She did not start at the bedside. Franciscan Media says she was put to work in the kitchen, the bakery and the laundry. ⁴ As a novice she was sent to the hospital at Treviso as a kitchen maid, and in 1907 she made her religious profession and took the name Maria Bertilla. ³

In time she was trained as a nurse and returned to the Treviso hospital to care for children with diphtheria. ³⁴ Franciscan Media says that was where she seemed to find her vocation, nursing very ill and disturbed children. ⁴ The encyclopedia is candid that, outwardly, her life was not out of the ordinary. ³ John XXIII described her in the wards among patients with contagious diseases, prompt, orderly, skilled and quiet, consoling and calming them. ⁶

Pius XII added that she had been misunderstood, rebuked and humiliated, and not only at home and in the village but by some members of her own congregation. ⁷

The war reached the hospital after Caporetto. When the Italian line collapsed in 1917, Treviso was bombarded, and the encyclopedia says her courage sustained the wounded soldiers. ³ Franciscan Media says the military had taken over the hospital and that she cared for patients under the threat of constant air raids. ⁴

Faith Magazine describes those nights. Some patients were too ill to be evacuated when the sirens sounded, and she volunteered to stay in the ward with them, though she was terrified herself, and prayed with the men through the attacks. ⁵ It adds that she took the menial work and the night shifts. ⁵

The advance of the German troops forced the hospital to move to Viggiù, which the encyclopedia places near Como. ³ Faith Magazine says that during the war a superior, jealous of the regard the soldiers had for her, took her off nursing and put her in the laundry, and that the mother general, when she heard of it, sent her back to nursing. ⁵ After the armistice she returned to Treviso, and Faith Magazine says she was made head of the children's ward. ³⁵

According to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, a tumor struck her at only 22, and she went on working. ² Franciscan Media says she suffered from it for many years. ⁴ Pius XII said that her own nursing experience must have told her about the illness long before, that she bore it to the limit, and that by the time she could no longer hide it, it was too late. ⁷ Faith Magazine says surgery failed to remove it. ⁵

She died at Treviso on October 20, 1922, at 34. ²³⁵ Pius XII beatified her on June 8, 1952. ²³ John XXIII canonized her on May 11, 1961, the feast of the Ascension that year, a year after he had canonized Gregorio Barbarigo, and he set the learned cardinal and the shy daughter of the fields side by side as two lovers of the catechism. ⁶

None of the sources consulted for this profile names a patronage for her, so this page does not claim one. ²³⁴⁵ She is often listed as patron of nurses and of people who have been rejected, but the Holy See's texts and the encyclopedia do not say so. ²³⁶ Franciscan Media's reflection asks readers to pray to her for all who suffer any form of spiritual, mental or physical abuse, since she knew an abusive home herself. ⁴ That is an invitation to prayer, and it is reported here as one.

Her feast is October 20, the day she died. Vatican News lists "St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin, Virgin of Vicenza" on that day, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints gives October 20 as her liturgical memorial, and the New Catholic Encyclopedia and Faith Magazine give the same date. ¹²³⁵ The encyclopedia adds that her feast was formerly kept on October 22. ³

Franciscan Media runs her as its Saint of the Day for February 26, without calling that date her feast. ⁴

Pius XII summed her up in a way that is unusual for a canonized saint: no ecstasies, and no miracles in her lifetime. ⁷ What the sources record instead is a child laughed at for being slow, a novice sent to the kitchen, and a nurse whom one superior moved to the laundry. ³⁴⁵ Her holiness, as they describe it, was carried out in the jobs she was given.

The air raids are the part of her story that is easiest to tell, and Faith Magazine is careful to say she was afraid. ⁵ She stayed in the ward with patients who could not be moved, and prayed with them while the bombs fell. ⁵ The sources do not turn that into fearlessness; they say she was terrified and remained.

She also kept working while ill. The Dicastery dates the tumor to her twenty-second year, and she died at 34. ² Pius XII thought she had understood what it was long before anyone else did. ⁷ None of the sources presents the illness as anything other than what it was, and she is not described as having been spared it.

And there is the book. A girl who struggled at school held on to the catechism her parish priest gave her, taught it to other children, and carried it out of Treviso when she was allowed to take nothing else. ⁶⁷ It was found in her pocket after she died. ⁷