St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin: The Nurse Nun of Treviso

Who was St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin?

St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin was a peasant girl from the hills near Vicenza whom her village called "the goose," and who became one of the best-loved nurses in Italian history. As a sister of the Teaching Sisters of St. Dorothy, Daughters of the Sacred Hearts, she spent her short life on the wards of the city hospital in Treviso, with children dying of diphtheria and soldiers wounded in the First World War. She died at thirty-four, and less than forty years later Pope John XXIII declared her a saint.

She was born Anna Francesca Boscardin on October 6, 1888, in Brendola, and her family called her Annetta. We keep her feast on October 20, the day she died in 1922.

The life of St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin

"The goose" of Brendola

Her parents were poor farmers. Her mother was gentle; her father, by every account, was jealous and violent, especially when drunk. Annetta and her mother sometimes fled the house; once they spent a night under the portico of the shrine of Monte Berico, crying beside the statue of Our Lady. John XXIII, at her canonization, did not hide it: "in Bertilla's family not everything was rosy and quiet."

She went to the village school only off and on, had to repeat the first grade and worked in the house and fields. She was shy and slow, and the nickname "the goose" followed her all her life. Her treasure was a catechism her pastor gave her. She read it over and over, taught it to the other girls, and, as the pope said, kept it "jealously among her dearest keepsakes."

A sister who could do nothing

Other religious houses turned her down. With her pastor's help she was accepted by the Teaching Sisters of St. Dorothy in Vicenza; the Dicastery's biography gives the year as 1905, other accounts 1904. She took the name Maria Bertilla. Antonio Sicari's life of her records what she said to her novice mistress, in its English translation: "I am not able to do anything. I am a poor goose. Will you teach me what I must do? I want to become a saint". For her first years she worked in the kitchen and the laundry.

The children's ward in Treviso

In 1907 she was sent to the city hospital of Treviso, run by her sisters, at a time when the hospital was torn by political fights between anticlericals and clergy. After a spell in the kitchen she was trained as a nurse, and at about twenty she was put in charge of the ward for children with contagious diseases. Most had diphtheria and needed tracheotomies or intubation and constant watching. Doctors who worked with her testified that terrified children who fought and refused food for days grew calm in her care.

The air raids

During the First World War Treviso, close to the front, was bombed again and again. When the sirens sounded and everyone ran for the shelters, Sister Bertilla stayed beside the patients who could not be moved, praying and giving a sip of marsala to those who fainted with fear. She was as frightened as anyone. She stayed anyway.

Sent to the laundry

After the breakthrough of the Austro-German armies at Caporetto in late 1917, the hospital was evacuated and its patients divided into groups. Sister Bertilla went north with some two hundred of them to Lombardy, where she nursed soldiers with tuberculosis. There a superior decided she was too attached to her work and her patients too attached to her. She took her off the ward and put her in the laundry, sorting heaps of infected linen, and let her know she was good for little else. Bertilla obeyed without complaint. Her superior general, who loved her, then sent her to a villa near Monte Berico to nurse seminarians struck by an epidemic fever, and by 1919 she was back at the hospital in Treviso.

"Saints in heaven, not on altars"

In October 1919 she attended a festival for a newly beatified Carmelite, Anne of St. Bartholomew. Amid the lights and decorations she whispered to her companions, "let us become saints too, but saints in heaven and not on altars."

She had carried a painful tumor since she was twenty-two and had already had surgery. On October 16, 1922, she could no longer stand. She was operated on the next day and died on October 20 in Treviso, at thirty-four.

Beatification, canonization and miracles

When her cause opened, her body was brought from Treviso to Vicenza. Pope Pius XII beatified her on June 8, 1952. Pope John XXIII canonized her on May 11, 1961, the feast of the Ascension. The Church examined approved miracles for each step; the sources consulted here do not describe them. In his homily the pope called her a "flower of the field" who spread the sweetest fragrance, and said that on the wards she was "ready and orderly, skilled and silent," so that even the distracted could see that Someone was always with her.

Why St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin is the patron saint of nurses

Nurses claim her because she was one: a ward sister who did the hard, unseen work of a hospital for fifteen years. She is invoked for the sick, for sick children and for hospitals; see the patron saints of nurses and all the patron saints. When a frightened sister could not bear the air raids, Bertilla took her place on the most exposed ward, telling the sister in charge, who felt guilty for asking,, "it is enough for me to know that I can be useful."

Symbols of St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin in art

• The black habit and bonnet of the Teaching Sisters of St. Dorothy, with a short cape.
• The medal of the Sacred Hearts on her chest, as in her photograph.
• A lily: her purity and simplicity, often in her arms on statues.
• A sickbed: her life as a nurse.
• A catechism: the book she treasured from childhood.

Feast day and where she is honored

Her feast is October 20. Her body rests in a small shrine at her congregation's motherhouse in Vicenza, and a parish in Vicenza is named for her. Treviso, where she nursed and died, and Brendola, where she was born, keep her memory. See the feast day calendar.

Prayer to St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin

No formal prayer to her has a long tradition, but we have a prayer she often said to Jesus, quoted in Sicari's life in English: "To always be with you, in Heaven, I want to share all the bitterness of this valley of tears: I wish to love you so much, by sacrifice, by the cross, suffering". Nurses and the sick ask her help in their own words: "St. Maria Bertilla, pray for us."

Let us ask her to make us faithful in small and hidden work, and to stay with those who suffer when it would be easier to run.