St. Mary di Rosa

St. Mary di Rosa (6 November 1813 – 15 December 1855) was born Paola di Rosa into a prosperous family at Brescia in northern Italy. From girlhood she devoted herself to works of mercy, and when her father's mill and household came under her care she looked after the welfare and moral formation of the young women who worked there. She organized aid for the sick, founded a house for the deaf and for girls at risk, and threw herself into nursing the victims of the cholera epidemics that swept the region.

In 1840 she founded the Handmaids of Charity of Brescia, a congregation dedicated to the care of the sick in hospitals and the service of the poor, taking the name Maria Crocifissa (Mary Crucified). Her sisters served heroically, tending the wounded of both sides even on the battlefields during the wars of Italian unification. Worn out by her labors, she died at only forty-two. She was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1954, honored as a model of self-giving charity to the suffering.