Celestina Bottego

Celestina Bottego was born on 20 December 1895 in Glendale, Ohio, in the United States. She was the daughter of Giovanni Battista Bottego, an Italian immigrant whose family roots lay in the province of Parma in northern Italy, and of Mary Healy, an American woman of Irish descent. The household in which she grew up was Catholic, and she received the sacraments and religious instruction customary in that tradition. After spending her childhood in the United States, she moved with her family to Parma, Italy, in 1910. There she continued her education, earned a teaching diploma, and worked as a schoolteacher, notably teaching English. She also participated in parish life and in the forms of Catholic Action and lay apostolate that were widespread in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century.

The diocese of Parma had a strong missionary identity because it was the home of Guido Maria Conforti, founder of the Society of St. Francis Xavier for Foreign Missions, commonly called the Xaverian Missionaries. Conforti, who later became bishop of Parma, promoted the idea that the whole Church is missionary. Celestina Bottego encountered this spirituality and felt called to give her life to the missions in a stable religious community of women. In the midst of the Second World War she collaborated with Father Giacomo Spagnolo, a priest of the Xaverian Missionaries, to bring such a community into being. The Xaverian Missionary Sisters of Mary were founded in Parma in 1945. Bottego entered the institute and was appointed its first superior general, a role in which she shaped the identity of the new congregation.

As foundress she attended to the spiritual formation of the sisters, the writing of a rule of life consistent with Xaverian missionary spirituality, and the practical needs of a young community in wartime and postwar Italy. The charism of the sisters combined a Marian spirituality with a commitment to announce the Gospel among peoples who did not yet know Christ. Members of the congregation undertook work in education, catechesis, health care, and other services, both in Italy and, as the institute grew, in mission countries. Bottego herself did not become a missionary in a distant land in the same way as some of her sisters; she remained in Parma, where she governed the motherhouse and supported the vocations and the expansion of the congregation through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Celestina Bottego died in Parma on 20 August 1980 at the age of eighty-four. She is honored by the Xaverian Missionary Sisters of Mary as their foundress and as a woman of faith who helped give institutional form to women’s participation in the Xaverian missions. She never married and had no children, having chosen the celibate life of a religious sister. She was not a pope or a patriarch, and she has not been beatified or canonized by the Catholic Church. No universal feast day or official list of patronages has been attached to her name. Her historical importance lies in the foundation and early guidance of a missionary congregation that continues to work in various parts of the world.