Saint Maria Crocifissa Di Rosa

She was born at Brescia on November 6, 1813, the sixth of nine children of a noble family. ⁵ Her father, the cavaliere Clemente Di Rosa, was in Agasso's phrase a prominent Brescian businessman, and her congregation credits him with an eye for the social problems of the district and a gift for practical answers. ⁴⁵ Her mother, Countess Camilla Albani, came from the nobility of Bergamo, and the congregation says she taught her daughter from early childhood to care for the needy. ⁴⁵

Her mother died in 1824, when Paola was eleven, and her father put her in the boarding school of the Visitation nuns, where she stayed until 1830. ²⁵ Pius XII, at her canonization, said that as soon as her earthly mother died she took refuge, like Saint Teresa of Jesus, in the arms of her mother in heaven (our translation from the Italian). ³ The congregation quotes the evidence collected for her beatification: asked once by her director what she said to the Lord in her daily half hour before the Blessed Sacrament, she answered simply, "I ask for something to suffer" (our translation). ⁵

Before she was eighteen, with her confessor's permission, she made a vow of perpetual chastity, and when a marriage was proposed she refused it plainly. ⁴⁵ Pius XII listed what she gave up: every vanity, the demands of fashion, worldly entertainments and every offer of an earthly marriage. ³

Her father, Agasso says, put her to work, sending her to run his silk mill at Acquafredda, a village of the Brescia countryside on the river Chiese, with some seventy women workers. ⁴ The congregation says she also looked after the poor on the family's summer estate at Capriano del Colle, and that wherever she was she organized parish missions, retreats, catechism classes for girls and the parish oratory, and paid for them herself. ⁵

At home in Brescia she kept a strict rule of prayer agreed with her spiritual director, Monsignor Faustino Pinzoni, and gave in secret to whoever knocked at the door of the Di Rosa house. ⁵ Pius XII added that she bore criticism patiently, especially from disappointed libertines. ³

In June 1836 cholera broke out in Brescia. ⁵ The congregation says the nobles left the city for the country, and that Paola, after consulting her director, wrote to her father instead of speaking, so that, in her words, his quick refusal would not stop the words in her mouth. ⁵ Her letter, in our translation, asks for one grace "for the love of Jesus Christ": "Let me devote myself to the service of these poor unhappy women. You will make to the Lord the sacrifice of your Paolina; I will make it of my life." ⁵

She entered the lazaretto on June 24, 1836, with a noblewoman, Gabriella Echenos Bornati. ⁵⁶ Pius XII said she drew other young women of her age into the same hard and dangerous work. ³ Agasso adds that they nursed the sick at home and cared for orphans as well. ⁴ Their friendship, the congregation says, was born in the wards of the lazaretto, and Gabriella stayed with her as her companion in charity until her death in 1844. ⁶

The congregation quotes her own later account, written in 1847: "Our Institute had its origin in the year 1836, when the cholera desolated our Brescia" (our translation). ⁶

When the epidemic ended she and her companions went on visiting the hospital. ³⁵ With her father and Pinzoni she drew up a plan, and on August 26, 1839, she and her companions petitioned the imperial provincial authorities to be allowed to care for the poor women in the hospital, in body and in soul. ⁶ On May 18, 1840, thirty-two Handmaids began their service in the hospital of Brescia, with Paola as superior and Gabriella as her vicar. ⁵⁶

The congregation stresses how new it was: the women took over the whole care of the sick, nursing, food, cleanliness and spiritual accompaniment, and she called them Handmaids rather than sisters because of it. ⁶ The rule of 1851 told them, in our translation, to keep firm the great truth that "as your patients take the place of Jesus Christ your Spouse, so they are your mistresses and you are their handmaids." ⁷ Pius XII said that the Handmaids took over the whole health service of the hospital of Brescia and soon other works too. ³

The congregation says Pius IX recognized the institute as a religious institute by decree of December 23, 1847. ⁵ Agasso and the summary from Avvenire on santiebeati.it date the Holy See's first approval to 1851. ⁴ The congregation says that in 1848 the Handmaids served on the battlefields, and Agasso describes them tending the wounded in the Ten Days of Brescia in 1849, when the city rose against the Austrians. ⁴⁵

Houses followed quickly: Cremona, Manerbio, Montichiari, then Mantua, Udine, Ragusa, Trieste and Split in Dalmatia, among others. ⁵ Her father bought the Mazzucchelli palace in Brescia for the institute, and it became the mother house; on June 18, 1852, it received perpetual daytime adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. ⁵ In 1852 she took her vows and the name Maria Crocifissa, which Agasso says was the religious name of her elder sister, who had died in 1839. ²⁴

Pius XII spoke of her inner life. She begged, he said, that crosses would not cease and that persecutions and trials would not be spared her, and she suffered physical pain and above all anguish of soul and darkness. ³ He quoted her prayer: "My Jesus! You alone are enough for me. Let my life be crucified with you" (our translation). ³

She fell ill at the Handmaids' house in Mantua, Agasso says, and came back to Brescia only to die. ⁴ She died there on December 15, 1855, at forty-two. ²⁴⁵ She is buried in the mother house. ⁴ Pius XII beatified her on May 26, 1940, and canonized her on June 12, 1954, with Peter Chanel, Gaspar del Bufalo, Joseph Pignatelli and Dominic Savio. ²³

No source read for this page names her patron of any group or cause. ²⁴ Her life was given to the sick in hospitals and in their homes, and her congregation carries that work on, but none of the sources makes it a patronage. ⁵⁶

Saint Maria Crocifissa Di Rosa's feast is December 15, the day of her death. ² The Roman Martyrology lists her that day, and the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints and her own congregation give December 15 as her memorial. ¹²⁵

She began with a letter to her father, written because she was afraid he would say no before she finished speaking. ⁵ What she asked for was work that Pius XII called hard and dangerous, and that the city's nobles had left town to escape. ³⁵

Her congregation describes a woman for whom adoration and service were one thing: the Christ she knelt to in the Eucharist was the one she nursed in the women of the hospital wards, and the rule of her institute told the Handmaids that the sick were their mistresses. ⁷ Pius XII did not make her sound comfortable. He said she asked for crosses and was given darkness. ³

She took the name of the crucified Christ, and the prayer he quoted from her is short: you alone are enough for me. ³ She was forty-two when she died, and the Handmaids were already at work from Brescia to Split. ⁵