Giulia Crostarosa

Giulia Crostarosa, known in religion as Maria Celeste, was born on 31 October 1696 in Naples, then capital of the Kingdom of Naples. She belonged to a well-to-do family and grew up among a large number of siblings. From an early age she was drawn to prayer and a life of devotion. In her early twenties she entered the Carmelite monastery at Marigliano, near Naples, together with one of her sisters, and received the religious name Maria Celeste. When that community encountered serious difficulties she left, and in 1724 she entered the convent of the Sisters of the Visitation at Scala on the Amalfi coast.

At Scala she underwent intense mystical experiences. From the mid-1720s she reported revelations in which Christ asked her to found a new religious family whose members would be a living memorial of the Redeemer, conforming their lives to the mysteries of his life. She drafted a rule on the basis of these communications. The priest Alphonsus Liguori, later founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer and a canonized saint and Doctor of the Church, examined her spirit, became convinced of the authenticity of her call, and helped bring the new institute into being. In 1731 the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer, whose nuns are commonly called Redemptoristines, was established at Scala. The sisters adopted a distinctive red and blue habit, colors associated with the Passion and with the mantle of Christ the Redeemer.

The early years of the foundation were marked by tension. Maria Celeste’s insistence on the rule as she believed it had been revealed brought her into conflict with ecclesiastical superiors, among them the priest Tommaso Falcoia, who wished to modify the constitutions. She was eventually obliged to leave Scala. After a period of instability and trial, during which she stayed in other communities, she established a new Redemptoristine monastery at Foggia in 1738. There she served as superior, formed her sisters, and continued to write. Her surviving works include autobiographical accounts of her inner life, expositions of the rule, and instructions on prayer. She remained in Foggia until her death on 14 September 1755, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Maria Celeste Crostarosa is remembered as a mystic of eighteenth-century southern Italy and as foundress of the Redemptoristine nuns, whose contemplative vocation was intended to support by prayer the missionary apostolate of the Redemptorists. Devotion to her persisted within those religious families. After a decree on her heroic virtues she was declared Venerable, and Pope Francis beatified her on 18 June 2016 in Foggia. Her liturgical memorial is kept on 11 September. She has not been canonized. Her life illustrates both the richness of Neapolitan baroque spirituality and the practical difficulties that often attended the foundation of new religious institutes in the Catholic Church of her time.