Feast day: April 10
St. Magdalene of Canossa
An Italian marchioness who left her noble family to serve the poor of Verona, founding the Canossian Daughters and Sons of Charity to teach and nurse the neglected.
Magdalene of Canossa was born in 1774 into one of the noblest and wealthiest families of Verona, in northern Italy, but her childhood was unhappy: her father died when she was young, and her mother remarried and left the children to the care of others. Out of this lonely upbringing grew a deep compassion for the abandoned.
Resisting both an advantageous marriage and the comfortable life her rank offered, she felt called to serve the poor directly. In the years of upheaval following the French Revolution and Napoleon's invasions of Italy, she left her family's palace to live among the poor of Verona, gathering neglected girls to teach and care for them.
In 1808 she founded the Daughters of Charity, also called the Canossian Sisters, devoted to the education of poor girls, the care of the sick, and the teaching of the faith; she later founded a corresponding congregation of brothers. Her institutes spread through northern Italy and, in time, far beyond.
She died at Verona in 1835, worn out by her labours. Canonized in 1988, she is remembered as a noblewoman who spent her whole inheritance and her life on the poor and the forgotten.
Born into one of Italy's great families, she gave it up to gather abandoned children from the streets of Verona and teach them herself.
Image: Maddalena di canossa (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_19881002_maddalena_di_canossa_en.html
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