MARIA CLOTILDE of Bourbon, queen of SARDEGNA, Venerable. — Born at Versailles to Louis, Dauphin of France, and Maria Giuseppina of Saxony on 23 Sept. 1759, died at Naples on 13 March 1802. She was raised in great piety at the French court by her grandmother Maria Leczinika. On 27 Aug. 1775 she married the Prince of Piedmont, Carlo Emanuele IV, later King of Sardinia (1796).
At the court of Turin she set an example of great austerity, charity, and devotion. Her life was marked by a succession of painful trials which she endured with admirable fortitude: with the French Revolution she lost her brother, Louis XVI, King of France, her sister Elisabeth, and her sister-in-law Queen Marie Antoinette. She often had to assume responsibility for government on account of her husband’s infirmities, whom in 1798 she accompanied into exile: Parma, Florence, Cagliari, Naples. When the process of beatification was begun, she was declared Venerable by Pius VII in 1808.