Saint Anna Maria Bertilla Boscardin
(1888-1922) –Image: Mc Rodriguez
(CNA) Anna Francesca Boscardin was born in Italy Brendola and lived a difficult childhood in a poor peasant family with an abusive alcoholic father prone to jealousy, she was afforded little education, so she could spend more time at home working and was often the butt of jokes and nicknamed ‘The Goose’ as she wasn’t considered to be not very intelligent.
However Anna’s life changed when she entered the ‘Sisters of Saint Dorthy’ in 1904 taking the name ‘Bertilla’ working in the convents kitchen and laundry for three years while training to be a nurse.
Sister Maria Bertilla, began working in a hospital for children in Treviso with diphtheria, quickly becoming the children’s favorite due to her simple and gentle way. Later when the hospital was taken over by the military in World War I, she cared for wounded soldiers, even staying with patients comforting them amidst the threat of constant air raids and bombings.
Subsequently an envious supervisor reassigned Sister Maria Bertilla now popular among the patients to a hospital laundry but when her Mother-General learned of this she made Sister Maria Bertilla head of the children’s ward in 1919 until her death.
Sister Anna Maria Bertilla passed away on the 20 October 1922 following a long battle with cancer. On the 31 July, 1949 she was declared ‘heroic in virtue’ and was Beatified by Pope Pius XII in June, 1952
On the 11 May, 1961 by Pope John XXIII Canonized Sister Maria Bertilla before a crowd of many of her former patients that fondly remembered her caring for them.
Related: Saint Maria Bertilla Boscardin –Vita dei Santi