Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds

Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds, born Anna Maria Gallo, was a woman of Naples and a lay Franciscan tertiary who spent her whole life in the crowded Spanish Quarters of the city. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on October 6 as a virgin who, amid constant sufferings and adversities, stood out for her patience, her penance and her love for God and for souls.

She was born in Naples on March 25, 1715. Her parents were small traders in haberdashery. Her father was a stingy and hot-tempered man, often violent toward his family. At the age of seven Anna Maria received her First Holy Communion. She attended the church of Santa Lucia al Monte, served by the Alcantarine Franciscans, and Saint John Joseph of the Cross became her spiritual guide. In the neighborhood people called her “santarella,” the little saint.

When she was sixteen, her father decided to marry her to a rich young man who had asked for her hand. Anna Maria refused, although her father tried to break her resistance by beating her. On September 8, 1731, she received the habit of the Franciscan tertiaries of the reform of Saint Peter of Alcantara, made her profession and took the name Mary Frances of the Five Wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ. She did not enter a convent but went on living in the world.

For the last thirty-eight years of her life she lived in the house of her spiritual director, Father Giovanni Pessiri, in the Vico Tre Re a Toledo, together with another tertiary, Maria Felice. Priests, religious and people from the neighborhood came to her modest home for advice and prayer. Among her visitors was the Barnabite Saint Francis Xavier Mary Bianchi, to whom, according to tradition, she foretold that he would be raised to the altars. She gave the poor the little she herself received.

All her life she struggled with illness, and to her physical sufferings were added hurts and accusations from other people. She offered them to Christ for sinners and practiced severe penances. Those who knew her spoke of ecstasies, the gift of prophecy and the stigmata. Her home still keeps the chair on which she bore her sufferings; today women who ask for the gift of motherhood sit on it.

She died in Naples on October 6, 1791, at the age of 76. She was buried in the church of Santa Lucia al Monte, and in 2001 her mortal remains were moved to the shrine set up in the house in the Vico Tre Re a Toledo where she had spent the last decades of her life.

Pope Gregory XVI beatified her on November 12, 1843, and Pius IX canonized her on June 29, 1867, in St. Peter’s Basilica. She was the first woman of Naples to be declared a saint, and the city honors her as one of its co-patrons.