Agostino Roscelli

Agostino Roscelli was born on 27 July 1818 in Casarza Ligure, in the Ligurian interior of what was then the Kingdom of Sardinia. His family was poor, and as a boy he worked as a shepherd in the hills around his native village. He received little early schooling, yet he was noted for piety and for a growing sense of vocation to the priesthood. Local priests assisted him in obtaining the education necessary to enter the seminary of the Archdiocese of Genoa, where he prepared for ordination.

He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Genoa in 1846 and remained in that city for the rest of his life. Roscelli’s ministry was marked by long hours in the confessional, by spiritual direction, and by practical charity toward the urban poor. He was especially attentive to young women who left rural Liguria to find work in Genoa and who often faced isolation, low wages, and moral danger. He also visited prisoners and took an interest in the spiritual and material welfare of labourers, including those employed on the railways that were then expanding around the port city.

In order to give lasting form to his work among girls and young women, Roscelli founded in 1876 the Institute of the Sisters of the Immaculata (Istituto delle Suore dell’Immacolata). The sisters were to provide education, safe lodging, and Christian formation for girls at risk, and to undertake other works of mercy. He himself remained a diocesan priest rather than joining a religious order, and he was remembered for personal humility, simplicity of life, and fidelity to prayer while he accompanied the new congregation in its first decades.

Roscelli died in Genoa on 7 May 1902. Popular devotion to him persisted among those who had known his ministry. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 7 May 1995 and canonized by the same pontiff on 10 June 2001. The Catholic Church observes his feast on 7 May. The Sisters of the Immaculata continue to work in education and charitable service in Italy and beyond, carrying forward the pastoral concerns that shaped his priesthood.