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Paola Francesca Di Rosa was born on November 6, 1813, in Brescia, Italy, one of nine children. Her father, Clemente, was a wealthy business owner, and her mother, a homemaker, was Countess Camilla Albani.
Paola’s initial education was with the Visitation Sisters until her mother died in 1824.
From the time she was a teenager, Paola exhibited certain qualities that would guide her life, qualities such as sensitivity to and compassion towards those in need, a strong commitment to her Catholic faith, strength of her convictions, a flair for administration, resiliency, and the ability to carry out her visions for helping others.
In her parish, Paola arranged retreats, missions, and a women’s guild by the time she was seventeen. She also rebuffed her father’s attempts to find a suitor for her, for she made up her mind that marriage was not her vocation. A priest that befriended her had a talk with Clemente, explaining that Paola wanted a different vocation than that of the married state.
In her late teen years, Paola went to work in her father’s spinning mill in Acquafredda, a town in the province of Brescia. She was such a good worker, that she was named supervisor of a workhouse for poor girls and women. It was in this institution that Paola noted that many of the young women had no safe place to stay at night when their day shifts were over.
When Paola tried to get the trustees of the workhouse to support her plans to start a boardinghouse fo the young women, they refused. So, she quit her job and went to work starting such a safe place for the young women while helping one of brothers who had a school for the deaf.
In 1836, a cholera epidemic in Brescia, and Paola helped nurse the sick in the local hospital along with some other women. Paola also directed a home for mute and deaf women. And in 1848, Paola and her companions nurse wounded soldiers in the war that was raging in Brescia.
Because of her work serving those in need, Paola attracted other women with the same desire to help those in need. They called themselves the Ancelle della carita, Handmaids of Charity. The group would morph into a new religious order in the Catholic Church. In religious life, Paola took the name Maria Crocifissa Di Rosa. She died on December 15, 1855, and was canonized on June 12, 1954. Saint Mary Di Rosa’s feast day is December 15.
Today, the Handmaids of Charity serve in nations of Europe, Africa, and South America.
