Blessed Maria Pierina De Micheli

Life

Giuseppina De Micheli was born on 11 September 1890 in Milan into a devout Italian family. From an early age she was drawn to prayer, and at twenty-three she entered the Daughters of the Immaculate Conception of Buenos Aires, taking the religious name Maria Pierina at her profession in 1914. She served the community as a teacher, formator and superior, leading houses in Italy and Argentina.

Mother Pierina is best remembered as the apostle of the Holy Face of Jesus in the twentieth century. From 1936 onward she reported a series of interior locutions in which Christ asked that his Holy Face — disfigured in the Passion — receive renewed honour and reparation, particularly against the blasphemies and indifference of the modern age. Working with the Benedictine priest Hildebrand Gregori, she had a medal struck bearing the image of the Face of Christ taken from the Shroud of Turin, with a Eucharistic monstrance on the reverse. Pope Pius XII granted approval to the medal and indulgences attached to its use, and the devotion spread rapidly throughout the Church.

Her life was marked by serious illness and quiet endurance; she carried out her duties faithfully while offering her suffering for priests and for sinners. She died at Centonara on 26 July 1945. The diocesan inquiry into her cause opened decades later and she was declared Venerable, with a miracle in favour of a Brazilian girl approved in 2010. Maria Pierina was beatified on 30 May 2010 at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome by Cardinal Angelo Amato on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. Her feast is observed on 26 July.