Giuseppina Vannini

Giuditta Vannini was born in Rome on 7 July 1859, in the closing years of papal temporal rule over the city, the daughter of Angelo Vannini and Annunziata Papi. She lost her father in early childhood and her mother a few years later, and as an orphan she was placed with her siblings in an institution conducted by the Daughters of Charity. There she received a Christian education and first felt a call to consecrated life and to the service of the poor and the sick. After leaving the orphanage as a young woman she sought admission among the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul and entered their novitiate, but persistent ill health led to her dismissal before profession, a setback that left her vocation uncertain for several years.

In 1891 she came into contact with the Camillian priest Luigi Tezza, who had been charged with establishing a women’s congregation that would share the Camillian charism of serving the sick even at the risk of one’s own life. With a small group of companions she began community life in Rome in 1892. She took the religious name Giuseppina and became the first superior general of the Congregation of the Daughters of Saint Camillus. The sisters devoted themselves to the care of the sick in hospitals and in private homes, following a rule and spirit inspired by Saint Camillus de Lellis and joining professional nursing skill to a spirit of faith and maternal charity.

The early years of the institute were marked by poverty and by the absence of Father Tezza after his superiors sent him to Peru in 1900. Mother Giuseppina was left to govern the congregation alone. She faced financial hardship, local opposition, and the need to obtain stable ecclesiastical approval, yet she guided the community with prudence and oversaw its first foundations in Italy. She was known for her devotion to the Eucharist and her trust in Divine Providence.

Her own health, never strong, declined in her last years. She died in Rome on 23 February 1911. The Daughters of Saint Camillus later spread to many countries in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Pope John Paul II beatified her on 16 October 1994, and Pope Francis canonized her on 13 October 2019. The Catholic Church commemorates her on 23 February.