Suggest an Edit — Maria Gabriella Sagheddu

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Biography

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Maria Gabriella Sagheddu was born on 17 March 1914 in Dorgali, a town in the province of Nuoro on the island of Sardinia, then part of the Kingdom of Italy. She was the fifth of eight children of a shepherd family of modest means; her father died during her childhood. Baptized Maria, she was remembered as a girl of determined and sometimes difficult character. After she received the sacrament of Confirmation her disposition changed: she became more prayerful, helped in her parish as a catechist, and worked as a seamstress. In her early twenties she felt called to contemplative life.

In 1935 she traveled from Sardinia to the Italian mainland and entered the Trappistine monastery of Grottaferrata, a community of Cistercian nuns of the Strict Observance near Rome. She was clothed in the novice's habit in 1936 and received the name Sister Maria Gabriella. On 31 October 1937 she made her simple profession of vows. The nuns followed a life of enclosure, silence, the Divine Office, and work, according to the Cistercian interpretation of the Rule of Saint Benedict.

In January 1938, during the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity, Sister Maria Gabriella obtained her abbess's permission to offer her life to God for the unity of Christians. Soon afterward she developed tuberculosis. She accepted the illness as the form in which her offering was to be fulfilled. She died at Grottaferrata on 23 April 1939, aged twenty-five, after fewer than four years of monastic life.

Interest in her life grew in Catholic ecumenical circles. After the usual process, Pope John Paul II beatified her on 25 January 1983 in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, deliberately choosing a date within the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. She is venerated as Blessed Maria Gabriella of Unity and is regarded as a patron of Christian unity and of the ecumenical movement. When the Grottaferrata community later moved to Vitorchiano in the province of Viterbo, her remains were transferred to the monastery there and remain a focus of devotion.

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