Magdalene of Canossa

Magdalene of Canossa was born Maddalena Gabriella di Canossa on 1 March 1774 in Verona, then a city of the Republic of Venice, into the noble house of the Marquises of Canossa. Her father was Marquis Ottavio di Canossa and her mother Countess Teresa Szluha, of Hungarian origin. When Magdalene was five years old her father died after a riding accident. Her mother soon remarried and left Verona, and the children were raised by an uncle and other relatives in the family palace. That early experience of bereavement and abandonment remained a lasting influence on her later concern for neglected children. She received the education customary for a young woman of her rank and in adolescence suffered periods of illness and interior trial.

Drawn to a life of prayer, she twice sought to enter the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Verona in the 1790s, but she left after brief stays, concluding that cloistered life was not her vocation and that she was called instead to serve the poor in the world. During the Napoleonic period Verona underwent occupation, political upheaval, and widespread poverty. Magdalene began to gather poor and abandoned girls for instruction in Christian doctrine and practical work, to visit the sick in hospitals, and to assist prisoners. Relatives expected her to marry and to administer the family estates in the conventional manner of her class; she refused marriage and gradually devoted her property and energy to charity, using rooms of the Canossa palace and later other buildings for this work.

In 1808 she established in a poor district of Verona, near the basilica of San Zeno, the first community of the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor, later known as the Canossian Daughters of Charity. The institute was dedicated especially to the Christian education of girls of humble condition, to catechesis, and to care of the sick. Magdalene composed a rule of life for the sisters that stressed evangelical poverty, humility, and devotion to Christ crucified and to the Blessed Virgin under the title of Our Lady of Sorrows. During her lifetime houses were opened in Venice, Milan, Bergamo, and other cities of northern Italy. She also prepared the way for a corresponding congregation of men, the Canossian Sons of Charity, which took more definite form in her last years and after her death.

Magdalene of Canossa died in Verona on 10 April 1835. She was beatified by Pope Pius XII on 7 December 1941 and canonized by Pope John Paul II on 2 October 1988. In the Catholic Church her liturgical memorial is observed on 8 May. The Canossian family of religious institutes has continued her work in education, healthcare, and missions in many countries.