Blessed Eugenia Ravasco

Blessed Eugenia Ravasco was an Italian religious from Genoa, the foundress of the Congregation of the Daughters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, to which she entrusted the education of girls and the care of the sick and of children. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on December 30, the day of her death.

She was born on January 4, 1845, in Milan, the third of the six children of a Genoese banker. She lost her mother in early childhood and spent her first years in the care of an aunt. In 1852 she went to live with her family in Genoa. Three years later her father died as well, and the orphans were taken in by their uncle Luigi Ravasco, a man of deep faith. From her First Communion, which she received in 1855, Eugenia had a special love for the Eucharist.

After her uncle’s death in December 1862, the seventeen-year-old Eugenia took on responsibility for the family and its property. She was advised by Canon Salvatore Magnasco, later archbishop of Genoa. Her aunt was preparing a brilliant marriage for her, but Eugenia prayed to recognize her own path.

On May 31, 1863, she entered the church of Santa Sabina in Genoa to pray before the Blessed Sacrament. The preacher, Father Giacinto Bianchi, was just then asking the faithful whether there was no one among them who wished to be dedicated to doing good for love of the Heart of Jesus. Eugenia took these words as addressed to her. She gave God her life and the fortune she had inherited, of which she used to say that it belonged to the Lord and that she was only its trustee. She taught catechism in her parish, opened her home to the girls of the neighborhood, and visited the sick in the hospitals and the poor, bearing the reproaches of her relatives.

On December 6, 1868, at the age of 23, she founded a religious congregation that was to do good, especially to young people. Schools, associations, and oratories came into being. Mother Eugenia wanted to bring up the young to be honest citizens and saints. In 1878, at a time of open hostility toward the Church, she opened in Genoa a school for training women teachers and persevered despite the attacks of the press. Archbishop Magnasco approved the congregation in 1882, and in 1884 the foundress made her perpetual vows together with her sisters.

She also reached out to the dying, to prisoners, and to people far from the Church. In 1892 she built a house in Genoa for young working women. She considered joy the best climate for education. For twenty years she suffered from illness. She died in Genoa on December 30, 1900, at the age of 55. In farewell she said to the sisters, “I leave you all in the Heart of Jesus.”

In 1909 the congregation received pontifical approval; today the sisters work on several continents. John Paul II declared Eugenia Ravasco blessed on April 27, 2003, in Rome, on Divine Mercy Sunday. In the apostolic letter of beatification he set her liturgical memorial for October 24; the Roman Martyrology lists her under the date of her death.