Blessed Bruna Pellesi

Blessed Bruna Pellesi (11 November 1917 – 1 December 1972), known as Maria Rosa of Jesus, was an Italian nun who was a member of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Christ. Pellesi served as an educator in places such as Sassuolo until she contracted tuberculosis and was moved to various sanatoriums for recuperation until the end of her life when she died in her convent. Pellesi was beatified under Pope Benedict XVI on 29 April 2007 but it was Cardinal José Saraiva Martins who presided over the celebration in Rimini on the behalf of the pope. Bruna Pellesi was born on 11 November 1917 in Modena as the last of nine children to farmers and she had at least two brothers. She was baptized as "Bruna Aldina Maria Pellesi" that same November. The death of her two sisters-in law in her adolescence saw her take up farming for a financial income and helped to raise the six small children left behind - all aged four or under. On 27 August 1940 she joined a Franciscan religious order for nuns and assumed the new religious name of "Maria Rosa of Jesus". She was in religious formation from 1940 until 1942 when she made her first vows in Rimini on 25 September; she assumed the habit of the order on 24 September 1941. Pellesi graduated as a kindergarten teacher on 11 July 1942. Her first assignment was to teach at the Saint Anne kindergarten in Sassuolo from 30 September 1942 until 19 May 1945 when she began teaching at the local parish school in Ferrara for a few months in 1945 before contracting tuberculosis and being hospitalized on 5 September; in July 1945 she set up a kindergarten. She was hospitalized until 15 November when she was sent to the Pineta sanatorium in Gaiato where she was until 7 December 1948 when she left to enter the CA Pizzardi sanatorium in Bologna - she was there until 1970. She was well enough on 31 August 1947 to make her perpetual vows.