Canossa, Magdalene Gabriella dei Marchesi di, Blessed

CANOSSA, MAGDALENE GABRIELLA, dei marchesi di, beata. - Born in Verona on 1 March 1774, died there on 10 April 1835. Orphaned of her father at the age of five; abandoned at the age of seven by her mother, the marchioness Teresa Szluha, who entered into another marriage, at the age of eighteen she tried to become a Carmelite among the Discalced nuns of Conegliano. She devoted herself to the care of girls of the street (1799), beginning to gather a few of them into a boarding house (1800-1801); then she set up a "Ritiro Canossa" in a small house purchased near S. Zeno in Oratorio (1802), where she also opened (1803) a charity school. She also tried to live there (1805), but was soon forced to return to her family. Having obtained in 1808 from the civil authorities the former monastery of Sts. Joseph and Fidenzio, in the popular quarter of S. Zeno Maggiore (which she later received as a gift from Francis I on 30 Nov. 1815), she moved her first retreat there and established herself there as well. With her there also entered, as superior, donna Leopoldina Naudet (1773-74) with some companions, who had belonged to a dissolved institute that was intended to be re-established. Canossa and Naudet worked together until Nov. 1816.

To the first draft of her institute of the "Daughters of Charity" of Verona the Blessed gave definitive form in Venice (1812-16), where she dictated her rules. On the model of Venice she then reformed the community of Verona; and gradually she devoted herself to the foundations of Milan (1816), Bergamo (1820), Trento (1828); and she prepared those of Brescia and Cremona, established after her death. The aims of the foundress were: instruction and education of the poorest and most abandoned young women; instruction and assistance to women of the lowest class; assistance in Christian doctrine in the parishes; visits, assistance, and instruction to the sick in hospitals; internal instruction of young women from the countryside to make them country schoolmistresses; sometimes also the education of deaf-mutes; for the benefit of the wealthier class, the practice of spiritual exercises for ladies in the various houses of the institute. She promoted in various places the pious Union of ladies for hospital visits; she also attempted a foundation of "Sons of Charity." A most noble soul, she won the admiration of Bonaparte, and that of the sovereigns of Austria; Pius VII gave her directives and comforts; Leo XII approved her constitutions and the institute (1828); Pius XI proclaimed the heroism of her virtues and Pius XII beatified her on 7 Dec. 1941.

Giuseppe Stofella