St. Giuseppina Vannini

Who was St. Giuseppina Vannini?

St. Giuseppina Vannini was a Roman sister who founded the Daughters of St. Camillus, a congregation of women devoted to caring for the sick. She lost both parents as a small child, was turned away from religious life twice because of her poor health, and was nearly thirty-two before she found her path. Then she gave the rest of her life to the sick and to the sisters she formed. Pope Francis canonized her on October 13, 2019, and we keep her feast on February 23.

An orphan of Rome

She was born in Rome on July 7, 1859, the second of three children of Angelo Vannini and Annunziata Papi, and was baptized the next day at Sant'Andrea delle Fratte with the names Giuditta Adelaide Agata. Her father, a cook, died suddenly in 1863, and her mother three years later. The three children were separated. Giuditta was taken into the Conservatorio Torlonia in Rome, run by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, while an aunt, Anna Maria, looked after her like a second mother.

She received First Communion and Confirmation on March 19, 1873, earned a diploma as a kindergarten teacher, and learned to speak and write French well.

Two closed doors

In 1883 she entered the novitiate of the Daughters of Charity at Siena, but she was frail and was soon sent away. Readmitted later, she served at Montenero and Bracciano until 1888, when she was dismissed for good. Her superiors decided she had no vocation. She was twenty-nine. The official biography of her congregation says she was often found embroidering to earn her bread, her face wet with tears.

The meeting with Father Tezza

In December 1891 she joined a retreat in Rome for French-speaking women. The scheduled preacher fell through, and the Camillian priest Blessed Luigi Tezza took his place. At the end of the retreat Giuditta went to his confessional and told him her story and her longing to give herself to God. Tezza told her he hoped to found a congregation of women in the spirit of St. Camillus de Lellis, and he asked whether she would help him. She prayed about it and said yes.

On January 15, 1892, she and two other young women moved into rooms on Via Merulana. On February 2 they received the scapular of the Camillian tertiaries, marked with the red cross, in the room at the Maddalena where St. Camillus had died, which had been made a chapel. Her sisters count that day as the birthday of their congregation. On March 19 Giuditta took the habit and the name Sister Maria Giuseppina.

Mother of the Daughters of St. Camillus

She made her perpetual vows on December 8, 1895, and was elected superior. She held that office until she died. The beginnings were hard. Pope Leo XIII twice declined to approve the new institute, and in 1900 Father Tezza was sent to Peru and never returned to Europe. From then on the weight of the congregation rested on her, and the two founders guided the sisters by letter.

The Daughters of St. Camillus took the four vows of their founder's tradition, including service to the sick even at the risk of one's life. They nursed in homes and hospitals, and houses opened in Cremona in 1893 and Mesagne in 1894, then in France, Belgium and Buenos Aires. "Always see in the sick the image of the suffering Jesus," she told her sisters; Pope John Paul II quoted these words at her beatification. She also liked to say that "the only basis of holiness is humility."

In 1909 the Cardinal Vicar of Rome approved the Rule and made the institute a congregation of diocesan right. Worn out, with a weak heart, she died at the house on Via Giusti in Rome on the night of February 23, 1911. The congregation then had sixteen houses in Europe and the Americas. Papal approval followed in 1931.

The miracles of St. Giuseppina Vannini

Both miracles in her cause are approved:

• Buenos Aires, 1958. A healing obtained through her intercession was investigated in Argentina. In 1993 the medical consultants of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints judged the cure rapid, complete, lasting and scientifically inexplicable. It opened the way to her beatification on October 16, 1994.
• Sinop, Brazil, 2007. On February 19, 2007, the construction worker Arno Celson Klauck fell more than ten meters, head down, into the elevator shaft of a nursing home being built in her name. As he fell he cried out, "Mother, help me!" He was found conscious, with only a cut lip, and went back to work three days later. Pope Francis approved the miracle on May 13, 2019.

Symbols of St. Giuseppina Vannini in art

St. Giuseppina lived in the age of photography, and most images of her are photographs and modern portraits. Look for:

• The black habit with the large red cross: the sign of St. Camillus, worn by her sisters.
• A crucifix: her call to see the suffering Christ in every sick person.
• The sick at her side: the work she gave her life to.

The same red cross marks St. Camillus himself in older art, as in Cristóbal Lozano's eighteenth-century painting.

Feast day and prayer

We keep the feast of St. Giuseppina Vannini on February 23. Her sisters care for the sick today on four continents, and their general house is at Grottaferrata, near Rome. See the feast day calendar for the other saints of February.

We do not know of a traditional prayer to her that we can cite. Let us ask her to pray for nurses and caregivers, for the sick and the dying, and for anyone who has been told there is no place for them: St. Giuseppina Vannini, pray for us.