Blessed Assunta Marchetti

Assunta Marchetti, SS (15 August 1871 – 1 July 1948) was an Italian Catholic who cofounded of the Missionary Sisters of Saint Charles Borromeo. She worked in Brazil from 1895 until her death. Her priest brother Giuseppe is titled as Venerable on the path to sainthood. Her beatification was celebrated on 25 October 2014; Cardinal Angelo Amato presided over the beatification on the behalf of Pope Francis. Maria Assunta Caterina Marchetti was born on 15 August 1871 to Angelo Marchetti (1846-93) and Carola Ghilarducci as the third of eleven children; she received her baptism on 16 August. In 1880 they relocated to Mulino di Camaiore where her father commenced work as a miller. Marchetti received her Confirmation in 1883 and made her First Communion at the same time. Her aunt Caterina was an influence for her religious formation. Marchetti led a pious life as a child but suffered hardships with a frail mother and the premature death of her father from pneumonia in 1893 and she had to help her mother and halt pursuing her dream to enter the Carmelites. The girl later met Giovanni Battista Scalabrini and made vows as a nun into his hands on 25 October 1895 in Piacenza with her widowed mother and two companions Angela Larini and Maria Francheschini. In 1895 her priest brother Giuseppe invited her to work with him abroad in Brazil to cater to the orphans of Italian immigrants. Marchetti accepted the invitation and travelled there alongside her mother and two companions (Larini and Francheschini) setting off from Genoa on 26 October 1895. Both she and her priest brother later co-founded the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo - or the Scalabrinian Sisters - not long after their arrival. Her mother later left Brazil back for her homeland to tend to her children in 1897. In October 1897 she made her perpetual profession to Father Faustino Consoni. She collaborated with Scalabrini in 1904 when he visited Brazil for a month not long before the latter died.