Blessed Itala Mela, Mystic of the Holy Trinity

Who was Blessed Itala Mela?

Blessed Itala Mela was an Italian teacher who walked the whole road from unbelief to the heights of prayer. Raised in a home without faith, she called herself an atheist as a girl, returned to God as a university student in Genoa, and spent the rest of her life, much of it in illness, telling the Church a truth she felt had been forgotten: that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit dwell in the soul of every baptized person. As a Benedictine oblate she took the name Maria della Trinità, Mary of the Trinity. We keep her feast on April 28.

The day after her beatification, which fell on Trinity Sunday 2017, Pope Francis spoke of her at the Angelus: "She was raised in a family far removed from the faith; in her youth she professed to be an atheist, but converted after an intense spiritual experience."

The life of Blessed Itala Mela

A childhood without God

Itala was born in La Spezia on August 28, 1904. Her parents, Pasquino and Luigia Mela, were schoolteachers, honest people but far from the faith; her father was an open atheist. She was baptized at home by the midwife, and her early upbringing was left to her maternal grandparents.

In 1920 her little brother Enrico died at the age of nine. The loss struck her as unjust and cruel, and she made her family's atheism her own.

"Lord, if you exist, make yourself known"

In 1922 she enrolled in the faculty of letters at the University of Genoa and boarded with the Sisters of Our Lady of the Purification. When the sisters invited the students to receive Communion together on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1922, Itala first felt something close to rebellion. Then, partly to please them and partly out of curiosity, she went to confession in the Capuchin church. Cardinal Angelo Amato, in his homily at her beatification, called it "an unexpected appointment with grace." Her prayer in those uncertain months was: "Lord, if you exist, make yourself known."

By April 1923 she had decided for the faith, and she took a resolution she kept for life: "Lord, I will follow you even into darkness, even at the cost of dying." She went to Mass daily and to confession weekly, and she joined the FUCI, the federation of Catholic university students, whose national chaplain in those years was Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope St. Paul VI. Busy as a young teacher, she kept her spiritual reading on the tram: three-quarters of an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon.

"You will make it known"

She took her degree in 1926 and taught at Pontremoli, and there, on August 3, 1928, came the moment that shaped her life. In the seminary church she was asking a priest, Monsignor Corradini, about the mystery of the indwelling of the Trinity in the soul. A ray of light from the tabernacle enveloped her, and she heard clearly the words: "Tu la farai conoscere!" (You will make it known!). Frightened, she fled the church. But she gave her "yes."

She longed to be a Benedictine nun and was accepted by a monastery in Belgium, but illness forced her home. Instead she became an oblate of the Benedictine monastery of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, making her profession on January 4, 1933, and taking the name Maria della Trinità.

On June 11, 1933, under the guidance of the Benedictine abbot Adriano Bernareggi, later bishop of Bergamo, she made what she called her fifth vow: to make the indwelling of the Holy Trinity the foundation of her spiritual life, to pray that souls, especially priests and religious, would know and live this truth, and to offer every pain in reparation for the forgetting of it. On April 21, 1941, at Bernareggi's suggestion, she sent a memorandum on the indwelling to Pope Pius XII.

Hidden years in La Spezia

From September 1933 her health kept her mostly in La Spezia. She gave up teaching in 1938. During the war she was evacuated to nearby villages. Yet she stayed active as long as she could: in diocesan Catholic Action, as diocesan president of the Catholic graduates from 1949 to 1953, and in helping bring Benedictine nuns to the diocese in 1952. Cardinal Amato recalled that, though she had little money, she was generous to the poor with collections, clothes and food. In her last years illness kept her almost a recluse, but students, friends and diocesan leaders kept coming for advice. She died in La Spezia on April 29, 1957, aged fifty-two.

Beatification and the approved miracle

• Approved: on December 14, 2015, Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to her intercession. Cardinal Angelo Amato beatified her on June 10, 2017, in Piazza Europa in La Spezia, on the eve of Trinity Sunday.

Her remains have rested since 1983 in the crypt of the Cathedral of Christ the King in La Spezia.

Symbols of Blessed Itala Mela in art

There is no traditional iconography yet; she is known from photographs. Images of her naturally use signs of the Holy Trinity, such as a triangle or three interlaced circles, the medal of a Benedictine oblate, a book for the teacher and writer, and the tabernacle from which she saw the light at Pontremoli. Masaccio's Trinity on this page shows the mystery she lived for.

Feast day and prayer to Blessed Itala Mela

We keep her feast on April 28. Her beatification fell on the eve of Trinity Sunday, a fitting day for her. See the feast day calendar.

On the day of her beatification the Diocese of La Spezia-Sarzana-Brugnato issued an Italian prayer to the Holy Trinity, with the bishop's imprimatur. It thanks God for the witness and teaching of Blessed Itala Mela, who showed the worth of being indwelt by the Trinity, and asks that through her intercession we may live out what this means and proclaim it. Blessed Itala Mela, pray for us.