Maria Anna Donati

Maria Anna Donati was born on 26 October 1848 in Marradi, in the Mugello district of Tuscany, when the region still belonged to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. She came from a modest Catholic family and received a Christian upbringing typical of rural central Italy in the mid-nineteenth century. From childhood she was noted for piety and for practical concern for people in need. The political changes of the Risorgimento, including Tuscany’s later incorporation into the Kingdom of Italy, formed the background of her early years, but her own path turned toward religious consecration and service of the poor rather than public life.

In Florence, where she later lived and worked, she encountered the educational tradition of Saint Joseph Calasanz and the Piarist schools, which had long sought to give free instruction to poor children. Convinced that impoverished girls in particular lacked schooling and protection, she felt called to gather companions for a new community dedicated to that apostolate. In 1889 she founded in Florence the Congregation of the Daughters of the Poor of Saint Joseph Calasanz. She took the religious name Celestina of the Mother of God. With the first sisters she opened houses that combined elementary education, simple vocational training, and Christian formation for abandoned or very poor children, answering the urban poverty of late-nineteenth-century Florence.

As foundress and superior she had to obtain diocesan support, form candidates, and find the means to house and teach those entrusted to the sisters. The congregation lived poorly and depended on alms, work, and trust in providence. Over time it received canonical approvals and opened further houses. Donati emphasized humility, fidelity to the Calasanzian charism of educating the poor, and maternal care for both the sisters and the children. She continued to govern the institute into the early twentieth century, through the First World War and the social strains of the postwar years.

She died in Florence on 18 March 1925. A reputation for holiness persisted among the sisters and those they served, and a cause for beatification was introduced. She was beatified on 30 March 2008; Pope Benedict XVI authorized the beatification, which was celebrated in Florence. The Church commemorates her on 18 March. The congregation she founded continues educational and charitable work in the spirit in which she established it.