MARIA CLOTILDE of Bourbon, queen of SARDEGNA, venerable. — Born at Versailles to Luigi, dauphin of France, and Maria Giuseppina of Saxony, on 23 September 1759; died at Naples on 13 March 1802. Brought up in profound piety at the French court by her grandmother Maria Leczinka, on 27 August 1775 she married the prince of Piedmont, Carlo Emanuele IV, later King of Sardinia (1796).
At the court of Turin she gave an example of great austerity, charity, and devotion. Her life was a succession of painful trials, which she endured with admirable fortitude; during the French Revolution she lost her brother, Luigi XVI, king of France, her sister Elisabetta, and her sister-in-law, Queen Maria Antonietta. She often had to assume responsibility for the government because of her husband’s illnesses, and in 1798 she accompanied him along the roads of Italy: Parma, Florence, Cagliari, and Naples. Once the process of beatification had begun, she was declared venerable by Pio VII in 1808.