Feast day: October 20

St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin

Virgin, Religious · 1888–1922

Patron of Nurses

An Italian farm girl thought too dull for anything but kitchen work who became a nursing sister, tending sick children and wounded soldiers, even under wartime bombardment.

Dismissed as slow and clumsy, she nursed children through diphtheria and soldiers under air raids with such courage that the wounded called her their angel.