Saint Virginia Centurione Bracelli

Saint Virginia Centurione Bracelli was a Genoese noblewoman, widowed young and the mother of two daughters, who devoted her life and her fortune to the poor of her city. Two religious congregations grew out of her work, though she herself remained a laywoman. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on December 15, the day of her death.

She was born on April 2, 1587, in Genoa. Her father, Giorgio Centurione, was later doge of the Republic. From childhood she was drawn to the cloistered life, but she had to yield to her father’s will. In 1602, at the age of fifteen, she married Gaspare Grimaldi Bracelli, a wealthy heir who was given to gambling and a dissolute life. She bore two daughters, Lelia and Isabella.

The marriage was short. Virginia patiently tried to draw her husband away from such a life, and when he fell gravely ill she nursed him. Gaspare died on June 13, 1607, in Alessandria, reconciled with God. The twenty-year-old widow made a vow of perpetual chastity and refused the second marriage her father urged on her. She went to live with her mother-in-law, raised her daughters, and managed their property.

In 1610 she recognized her vocation more clearly: to serve God in his poor. She gave them half the income from her dowry, and once her daughters were married she devoted herself entirely to those in need. In the winter of 1624 to 1625, when the war with the Duke of Savoy brought unemployment and hunger to Genoa, she took some fifteen abandoned girls into her home, and then more and more refugee women. She also founded the association of the Hundred Ladies of Mercy, who visited the poor in their homes.

In 1631, after years of plague and famine, Virginia rented the empty convent of Monte Calvario and moved there with her charges, whom she placed under the protection of Our Lady of Refuge. After three years the work had three houses and about three hundred residents, and in 1635 it was recognized by the Senate of the Republic. She shared food and clothing with them and taught them the catechism and a trade, so that they could earn their own living.

In 1641 the Senate appointed protectors of the work. Virginia handed its government over to them and from then on lived as the least of the “daughters”: she served in the house, nursed the sick, and went out to beg for the community’s support. The Rule asked of them obedience, poverty, work, and prayer, but without religious vows. Many of her former collaborators left her. In 1647 she brought about the reconciliation of the archbishop’s curia with the government of the Republic.

She died in Genoa on December 15, 1651, at the age of sixty-four. In time her work gave rise to the Sisters of Our Lady of Refuge on Mount Calvary and the Daughters of Our Lady on Mount Calvary. John Paul II beatified her on September 22, 1985, in Genoa, and canonized her on May 18, 2003, in Saint Peter’s Square. In his homily he called her a laywoman and recalled her words: when God alone is one’s goal, “all disagreements are smoothed out, all difficulties overcome.”