Blessed Sandra Sabattini, the First Engaged Woman Beatified

Who was Blessed Sandra Sabattini?

Blessed Sandra Sabattini was a young Italian laywoman from Rimini who gave her short life to God and to the poor. She was born on August 19, 1961, in Riccione, joined Don Oreste Benzi's Pope John XXIII Community at twelve, worked with disabled people and young drug addicts, studied medicine at the University of Bologna and was engaged to be married. On April 29, 1984, she was struck by a car, and she died three days later, on May 2, at 22.

The Church beatified her in Rimini on October 24, 2021. The apostolic letter of beatification describes her as a laywoman who, "moved by ardent charity and sustained by daily prayer, with youthful ardor dedicated herself to serving the sick." She is the first engaged woman to be declared blessed.

The life of Blessed Sandra

A child in the rectory

Sandra was baptized the day after she was born. When she was four, her family moved to Rimini to live in the rectory of the new parish of San Girolamo, where her mother's brother, Don Giuseppe Bonini, was pastor. The official site of her cause says she always carried a small rosary of ten beads, and that her grandmother would find her asleep at night holding it. A camp leader remembered the seven-year-old slipping into the chapel "with her doll in one hand and the rosary in the other." Her uncle said she liked to pray sitting on the floor before the Blessed Sacrament, early in the morning before anyone else came.

She was a good student. She painted, learned the piano and ran sprints on a track team.

"People I will never abandon"

At twelve she met Don Oreste Benzi, the Rimini priest who founded the Pope John XXIII Community to share life directly with the poorest. In September 1974 she went on one of his summer holidays with disabled young people at Alba di Canazei in the Dolomites. It was hard work, and it changed her. She told her mother: "We broke our bones, but those are people I will never abandon."

As a high school student she visited poor families at home, and in the summer of 1982 she began volunteering at the community's house for young people recovering from drug addiction, first at Igea Marina and then at Trarivi, near Montescudo. She graduated from high school with a score of 59 out of 60 and asked herself whether to leave at once for Africa or enroll in medicine. With her spiritual director, Don Nevio Faitanini, and Don Benzi, she chose medicine and entered the University of Bologna in 1980.

Engaged to Guido

In February 1978 she met Guido, two years older, and they were engaged the next year, when she turned eighteen. She saw her engagement as part of her vocation, not a separate thing. Her diary for July 23, 1983, says (in our translation): "Engagement: something integral to the vocation: the availability and love I live toward others is what I also live for Guido."

The last days

Two days before the accident she wrote what became her spiritual testament, in our translation: "This life that is unfolding, kept in rhythm by a steady breath that is not mine, gladdened by a serene day that is not mine, is not mine. There is nothing in this world that is yours. Sandra, realize it! It is all a gift, on which the 'Giver' can step in when and how he wishes."

On Sunday, April 29, 1984, she got out of a car at Igea Marina with Guido and a friend on the way to a community meeting, and another car struck her. Don Benzi rode in the ambulance with her. She was moved to Bellaria Hospital in Bologna and died on May 2 without regaining consciousness. At her funeral he said: "The world is not divided into good and bad, but into those who love and those who do not love. And Sandra, we know, loved much."

Sandra's diary

After her death, Don Benzi read the notes she had left on loose sheets, in a planner and in school diaries, and had them published. They show a young woman in constant conversation with God. One entry, from February 26, 1978, is a single decision: "Saying 'Yes, Lord, I choose the poorest' is too easy now, if everything then stays as before. No, now I say: I choose you, and that's it." Another, from February 13, 1983: "Charity is the synthesis of contemplation and action, the suture point between heaven and earth, between man and God."

The miracle of Blessed Sandra Sabattini

The healing approved for her beatification is approved. In July 2007 Stefano Vitali, 40, a father in the Pope John XXIII Community and a Rimini city official, was found to have rectal cancer. Surgery on July 26 could not remove it all; the tumor was stage four, with metastases in all 37 lymph nodes examined, and his doctor told his wife he had a few months. On September 3, Don Benzi told him he had asked the whole community to pray to Sandra for his healing.

Within weeks his tumor markers fell sharply, and in early November 2007, days after Don Benzi's own death, scans showed the cancer gone. Tests in 2018 found him still free of disease. In 2019 a Vatican medical board judged the cure "scientifically inexplicable," and Pope Francis approved the decree on October 2, 2019.

Why engaged couples ask her prayers

The Church has not given Blessed Sandra a formal patronage. It is natural for engaged couples to ask the prayers of the first engaged woman beatified, and for medical students and young people to turn to a medical student who died at 22. See all patronages on our patron saints page.

Symbols of Blessed Sandra in art

Sandra lived in the age of photography, so images of her follow her photographs: a young woman with long dark hair, often in the red sweater of the photo on this page, smiling. Devotional images add the small rosary she always carried, her diary, or the disabled and poor people she served. The church of San Girolamo in Rimini has a bas-relief of her, and a modern mural in Don Benzi's former parish church of La Resurrezione, at Grotta Rossa in Rimini, shows her among the works of his community.

Blessed Sandra Sabattini's feast day and tomb

We keep her memorial on May 4, the date the apostolic letter of beatification set. Her burial urn is in the church of San Girolamo in Rimini, the parish where she grew up. You can find other feasts on our feast days page.

Prayer to Blessed Sandra Sabattini

This prayer of intercession was approved by the Diocese of Rimini on September 8, 2021, and is printed in the English novena published by her cause:

We thank You God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, for the gift of Blessed Sandra Sabattini to Your holy Church. Sandra welcomed deeply the joy of Your revelation and the maternal gaze of Mary; she recognized Your presence in the poor and the little ones; she shared her life with those whom you placed next to her, in humility and essentiality; She was constantly looking for You in prayer and contemplation and she let herself be guided with confidence by the action of the Holy Spirit; she enjoyed building fraternal relationships and love. Grant us, Father, through her intercession, according to Your will, the grace we implore... In Your Church, may Sandra be always an example of holiness, in the Communion of Your Saints, to carry out Your loving plan. Amen.

Blessed Sandra Sabattini, pray for us.