VERZERI, TERESA EUSTOCHIO, Blessed. - Foundress of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, born at Bergamo on 31 July 1801, died there on 1 March 1852.
From her earliest years she showed an ardent desire to save souls, and such wisdom and recollection that she was later called the woman who was never a child. Yet the path she had to follow was very long and beset with thorns: having entered the Benedictine monastery of S. Grato, she left it six months later because of epilepsy; having re-entered, she again left after nineteen months by order of her director; the third time she was recalled, on the eve of her profession, by the bishop and the director together.
The latter then (8 Feb. 1831) ordered her immediately to take charge of a school and without delay to begin the new Institute, which he had dreamed of for years; to take care of the young women who wished to follow her example, to observe, experiment, and draw up the rules of the new Congregation, which was to be called the “Society of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart.” V. carried out the orders to the letter, and God blessed her activity, increasing vocations and the various kinds of establishments: boarding schools, schools, shelters, residences. She was beatified on 26 May 1946.