Saint Paola Frassinetti

She was born in Genoa on March 3, 1809, and was baptized the same day in the parish of Santo Stefano. ² She was the third child of Giovanni Battista Frassinetti and his wife Angela, after Giuseppe and Francesco, and two more boys, Giovanni and Raffaele, came after her. ²

Her mother died when she was nine, leaving her, in the Holy See's words, "to take care of the house." ² Vatican News says that from then on she cared for her father and her four brothers. ⁵ Agasso, on santiebeati.it, adds that an aunt helped her until she too died, when Paola was twelve, and that after that she managed alone. ⁴ She learned to read and write at home. ² Francis, speaking to her sisters in 2022, made the point plainly: she had never attended school, and she dared to found a congregation devoted to education (our translation from the Italian). ⁶

Her eldest brother, Giuseppe, became a priest, and his ordination and her first Communion were, the Holy See says, moments when she first felt the call to religious life. ² Her father was not enthusiastic. "How can he live without his Paula?" is how the biography puts his objection, and she waited. ²

The chance came through her health. The Holy See says that at nineteen, worn out by her life "as a precocious mother," she went to stay with Giuseppe, then parish priest of Quinto, a seaside village near Genoa. ² Agasso puts her there at twenty-two, as her brother's collaborator. ⁴ Her gentle manner drew the girls of the parish, and every Sunday they went into the woods to talk about God. ² Out of those meetings came the idea of an institute, which she confided to her brother. ²

On August 12, 1834, seven young women dedicated their lives to God at a Mass celebrated by Giuseppe. ² The Holy See places it in the sanctuary of San Martino in Albaro; Agasso says the church of Santa Chiara in Albaro. ²⁴ They called themselves the Daughters of the Holy Faith. ²⁴ They had nothing: their first house was a small one at Quinto, and they opened a school for very poor children and worked at night to keep themselves alive. ² When cholera spread through Genoa, the sisters went to help. ²

Agasso is frank about how close it came to failing: some of the first members fell ill, some left, there was gossip, and for a time her father made her come home. ⁴ In 1835 Father Luca Passi of Bergamo, a friend of Giuseppe's, asked her to take up the Pious Work of Saint Dorothy, which he had founded to reach the poorest girls where they lived and worked. ² She accepted, and her sisters became the Sisters of Saint Dorothy. ²⁴

On May 19, 1841, seven years after the founding, she arrived in Rome with two novices. ² The first house was two rooms over a stable in the Vicolo dei Santi Apostoli; Agasso says the stables belonged to the Torlonia princes. ²⁴ Gregory XVI received her and approved of the sisters' work. ² A first school opened at Santa Maria Maggiore in 1842, Agasso says, and then others, and a foundation at Macerata, in a constant struggle against poverty. ⁴

In 1844 the pope entrusted her with the Conservatory of Santa Maria del Rifugio at Sant'Onofrio, on the Janiculum, a house for girls that Agasso describes as a kind of reformatory. ²⁴ It became the mother house of the congregation. ²

Then came 1848. The Holy See says that an anticlerical spirit spread through Italy, that the Dorotheans in Genoa were molested, and that when Pius IX fled to Gaeta and the cardinals and bishops left Rome, Paola was left alone at the head of a large community. ² Agasso describes Sant'Onofrio as a battlefield in 1849 between the French and the volunteers of the Roman Republic. ⁴ By her order, he says, the sisters gave the republicans who arrived there food, shelter and care for their wounded, until the soldiers who had expected fanatics were saluting every sister they met. ⁴ When the storm passed she went to see Pius IX at Gaeta, and the Holy See compares the journey to Catherine of Siena's. ²

John Paul II, at her canonization, said that the cross cast its light over her whole life and work. ³ She blessed a year that began with some cross, he said, and counted any lightening of it a punishment: "Ah, any punishment," she used to say, "but do not take the cross from me" (our translation from the Italian). ³ She suffered, he went on, inner torments and persecution, slander, insults and mockery, and bore them convinced that her young institute had to be watered by her tears as a field is by rain. ³ The Holy See gives her own summary: "Those who suffer most, love most." ²

He found the source of that strength in her devotion to the Heart of Jesus. ³ She made it part of the rule: the sisters fasted on the vigil of the feast of the Sacred Heart, and on every first Friday sisters and pupils took turns in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. ³ In 1872 she consecrated the whole institute to the Heart of Jesus. ³

Her other phrase was about the will of God, "the unique gem we must seek," as she called it, and the Holy See quotes her: "Will of God - my paradise!" ² Agasso calls it her typical exclamation. ⁴

Her last thirty years, the Holy See says, were the time of expansion: houses in Rome, plans for Naples, Bologna and Recanati, and in 1866 the first sisters for Brazil and the first for Portugal. ² Agasso dates the call from Brazil to 1865 and says she went to Portugal herself. ⁴ "Be burning flames that inflame with God's love all those you come in contact with," she told her sisters. ²

Pius IX, who had encouraged her through many meetings, died in 1878. ² She died at dawn on June 11, 1882, at Sant'Onofrio, where her body remains, invoking the Virgin: "My Mother, remember I am your child." ²⁴ Pius XI beatified her on June 8, 1930, and John Paul II canonized her on March 11, 1984, the first Sunday of Lent in the Holy Year of the Redemption. ²³

The Holy See's biography for the day listed where the Dorotheans then worked, among them the United States, Brazil, Portugal, Angola and Taiwan. ² John Paul II read her life as a call to the true values of women and to their dignity, and hoped her sisters would carry her zeal to every continent. ³ Francis, in 2022, gave her charism in a phrase: "to evangelize by educating and to educate by evangelizing" (our translation). ⁶

No source read for this page names her patron of any group or cause. ²⁴ Her work was the Christian education of girls and young women, above all the poor, and the Martyrology remembers her for it, but none of the sources makes it a patronage. ¹³

Saint Paola Frassinetti's feast is June 11, the day of her death. ² The Roman Martyrology lists her that day, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints gives June 11 as her memorial, and Vatican News lists her among the saints of June 11. ¹⁵⁷

She was a girl keeping house for a father and four brothers, and the sources do not make that a preparation for anything; it was simply the life she had. ²⁵ She waited for years for her father's consent, and when the institute began it nearly came apart. ²⁴

What carried her, by her own account, was a plain acceptance of what God allowed: "Will of God - my paradise!" ² John Paul II saw it in her refusal to be spared the cross, which is not easy reading, and he did not soften it. ³

She never went to school, and she founded a congregation of teachers. ⁶ In Rome in 1849, by Agasso's account, her house stood on a battlefield, and she told her sisters to care for the soldiers who came to its door. ⁴