Gemma Galgani

Gemma Umberta Maria Galgani was born on 12 March 1878 in Camigliano, a hamlet of Capannori in the province of Lucca, Tuscany, then in the Kingdom of Italy. She was one of eight children of Enrico Galgani, a pharmacist, and Aurelia Landi. The family practiced the Catholic faith with regularity, and Gemma was instructed in prayers and doctrine from early childhood. Her mother died of tuberculosis while Gemma was still a young child, a loss that shaped her later piety. She was educated in Lucca by the Sisters of Saint Zita, received her First Communion in 1887, and was remembered by teachers as devout, intelligent, and generous toward poorer children. After her schooling she remained at home to help care for her father and younger siblings.

In the later 1890s the Galgani family fell into financial ruin. Enrico Galgani died in 1897, and the children were divided among relatives. Gemma, then in her late teens, was stricken with a grave spinal illness, described by contemporaries as tuberculosis of the spine, which left her paralyzed and in severe pain. In early 1899, following a novena to the Passionist saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, she recovered her mobility in a manner that those around her regarded as miraculous. The cure confirmed her attraction to Passionist spirituality, centered on meditation on the Passion of Christ. She sought to enter the Passionist convent in Lucca but was refused because of lingering health concerns and because reports of visions and interior locutions already surrounded her. She never pronounced religious vows and lived and died as a laywoman.

From 1899 Gemma resided in Lucca with the Giannini family, who received her into their household. In June 1899 she reported receiving the stigmata. According to testimonies gathered after her death, wounds corresponding to the crucifixion appeared periodically on her hands, feet, and side, typically from Thursday evening through Friday, and then disappeared. She also described mystical participation in other sufferings of the Passion, frequent converse with her guardian angel, and repeated diabolical attacks. Diocesan clergy and the Passionist priest Germano Ruoppolo, who became her spiritual director in 1900, examined these claims. Under obedience to Father Germano she composed an autobiography and many letters, which remain the chief sources for her interior life. Those who lived with her portrayed her as humble, obedient, given to long prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, and still willing to perform ordinary domestic tasks when her strength permitted.

Gemma Galgani died of tuberculosis on 11 April 1903 in Lucca; that day was Holy Saturday, and she was twenty-five years old. Father Germano collected depositions and published a biography that spread her reputation for holiness through Italy and other Catholic countries. A canonical process followed. She was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 14 May 1933 and canonized by Pope Pius XII on 2 May 1940. Her remains are enshrined in the Sanctuary of Saint Gemma Galgani in Lucca, beside a monastery of Passionist nuns who honor her as a member of their spiritual family. Popular devotion has made her a patron of students, of pharmacists, of those who have lost parents, of people suffering from spinal disease or chronic back pain, and of those who struggle with temptations against purity.