Maria Vittoria De Fornari Strata

Maria Vittoria De Fornari Strata was born in 1562 in Genoa, then the capital of the Republic of Genoa in northwestern Italy. She was the eldest of five children of Girolamo Fornari and Barbara Veneroso, members of the local nobility, and was raised in a devout household with the religious formation customary for girls of her station in the later sixteenth century. In 1579, at about seventeen years of age, she married the Genoese nobleman Angelo Strata. The marriage produced six children. After several years of married life Angelo Strata died in 1587 following an illness, leaving Maria Vittoria a widow with the care of a young family.

In widowhood she first devoted herself to the upbringing of her children while leading an increasingly intense life of prayer and charity. Once her children were provided for, she discerned a vocation to consecrated life. With the spiritual counsel of the Jesuit priest Bernardino Zanoni she resolved to found a community of women dedicated to the mystery of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. In 1604 she established in Genoa the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, whose members became known as the Annunziate Turchine or Blue Nuns because of the distinctive blue color of their habit. The foundation belonged to the wider movement of Catholic reform in early seventeenth-century Italy, in which new institutes of women combined enclosure, liturgical prayer, and service.

Maria Vittoria served as the first superior of the community and formed its early members in humility, poverty, and devotion to the Incarnation. The institute received the approval of the Archbishop of Genoa and later recognition from the Holy See. She continued to govern the nuns and to shape their way of life until her death. She died in Genoa on 15 December 1617.

Pope Leo XII beatified her on 21 September 1828. Her liturgical feast is observed on 7 September. Blessed Maria Vittoria is remembered as a wife and mother who, after widowhood, became a foundress and religious, illustrating a path from family responsibility to consecrated leadership in early modern northern Italy. The order she established survived her as a contemplative institute associated with the blue habit and the mystery of the Annunciation.