Saint Benedetta Cambiagio Frassinello

Benedetta Cambiagio Frassinello was an Italian Roman Catholic professed religious and the founder of the Benedictine Sisters of Providence. Frassinello married to appease her parents in 1816 but the couple decided to lead a chaste life and both pursued a call to the religious life with Frassinello joining the Ursulines in Capriolo at Brescia. But husband and wife later reunited after setting out to establish schools for the education of girls and the pair moved back to Genoa where she founded her order in 1838 based on the Benedictine charism. Frassinello's beatification was celebrated in 1987 and she was canonized as a saint in 2002. Benedetta Cambiagio was born on 2 October 1791 in Langasco in Genoa as the last of six children to Giuseppe Cambiagio and Francesca Ghiglione. Due to political discord, the family settled in Pavia in 1804. In 1811 she had a spiritual experience that gave her a profound desire for a life of penance and of total consecration to God. However, in obedience to the wishes of her parents, on 7 February 1816 she married the farmer and carpenter Giovanni Battista Frassinello in the Basilica of San Michele. In 1818 the couple decided each to live a celibate life "as brother and sister" more so because he was so impressed with her holiness and her desire for the religious life. The couple took in Benedetta's sister Maria who was suffering from intestinal cancer and whose husband had left her. The pair cared for her until she died in July 1825. Her husband Giovanni Battista entered the Somaschi Fathers and Benedetta joined the Ursuline congregation at Capriolo after having failed to join the Capuchin Poor Clares in Genoa. In 1826 she was forced to leave because of ill health and returned to Pavia but had a vision of Girolamo Emiliani who healed her. Once she regained her health - with the approval of the Bishop of Pavia Luigi Tosi - she dedicated herself to the education of girls.