At Genoa in Italy, Blessed Maria Repetto, virgin, of the Sisters of Our Lady of Refuge on Mount Calvary, who, hidden from the world, was renowned for relieving the afflicted and for raising the doubtful to the hope of salvation.
Lifespan: 1809–1890
Beatified: 4 October 1981 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 5 January
First of all, to be a religious.
Maria Repetto was born in Voltaggio, in the province of Alessandria but the Diocese of Genoa, on 31 October 1809. At the age of twenty-two, she entered in Genoa the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Refuge on Monte Calvario. During the numerous and severe cholera epidemics that struck the city, she ran fearlessly to the bedsides of the sick. The fame of the “holy nun” grew day by day, and when she took up the office of portress, she continued to bestow the treasures of her deep spirituality upon all who came to her for help and counsel.
From her youth, Maria Repetto had learned and lived a great truth, which she has also handed on to us: Jesus must be contemplated, loved, and served in the poor, in every moment of our lives.
She gave everything she had: her savings, her possessions, her word, her time, her smile. “To serve the poor of Jesus” was the programme of her Institute — a programme she fulfilled across fifty years of religious life, serving Jesus above all, growing in the perfection of love, and reminding herself: “first of all, to be a religious!”; and serving the poor, because Christ lives in the poor.
Saint Francis of Caporosso, called by the Genoese “the holy father,” would send to her — the “holy nun” — persons of every social condition who were in need of help and counsel. The humble friar who went about collecting alms, canonized in 1962, and the humble portress sister, raised to the honours of the altar, were, in the last century, the two poles of the religious life of Genoa. Maria Repetto was always joyful and serene, and she rejoiced in keeping her heart open — more open, even, than the convent door — ever giving, always giving, giving everything.
And this joy of her self-giving to God reached its culmination in her death: with a smile on her lips, she spoke her last words, which are a hymn of jubilation to the Mother of God: Regina caeli, laetare, alleluia!