St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin

St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin (6 October 1888 – 20 October 1922) was born Anna Francesca Boscardin to a poor farming family near Vicenza in northern Italy. Considered slow and simple as a child — even nicknamed "the goose" — she entered the Sisters of St. Dorothy, Daughters of the Sacred Hearts, taking the name Maria Bertilla and being assigned humble tasks in the kitchen and laundry before being trained as a nurse.

Working in the children's ward of the hospital at Treviso, she cared for the sick with extraordinary gentleness and patience, and during the First World War she tended the wounded and the victims of epidemics with heroic devotion, remaining at her post even under aerial bombardment. Humble and obedient, she bore both hard work and misunderstanding without complaint, and died at only thirty-four following surgery for a tumor. She was canonized by Pope John XXIII in 1961, honored as a model of holiness found in faithful, hidden service.