ZILERI DAL VERME, LUCREZIA. - General prioress of the Ursulines of the Sacred Heart of Parma; secular name Dru-silla; born in Parma on 1 August 1839, died there on 3 August 1923.
Educated at the city college of the Ursuline Dames, founded in 1575 under the name of Virgins of St Ursula by Maria Vittoria Masi, she soon took the habit of their Institute, entering in 1858 and devoting herself with diligence to the various offices entrusted to her, which gradually led her to the office of general prioress in 1886. Since the Institute, founded three centuries earlier, no longer suited, as it was, the new demands, indeed the urgent needs of the times, Z. sought to strengthen its spirit ever more and to bring it to the status of a true religious congregation. For this purpose she drew up new Rules, preserving from the old whatever still suited the times, and had the joy of seeing them definitively approved in 1899. She later published a full commentary on them in 1919. Meanwhile the houses and the communities had been increasing in number (Milan, Modena, Colecchio), and Z. watched over the formation of all in a profound interior life, centred on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; and she overcame with prudent energy the difficulties which the stormy times never ceased to stir up. To Z. is owed the institution of the Marian Congregation among the young and the Work of the Teachers, offering these women the opportunity of closed retreats, weekly religious conferences, a prelude to the Work of the Higher School of Religion, established in 1908 by Bishop Guido Conforti and entrusted in large part to the care of the Ursulines.