Blessed Clotilde Micheli

Clotilde Micheli (11 September 1849 - 24 March 1911) was an Italian Roman Catholic professed religious who established the order known as the Sisters of Angels; she assumed the religious name Maria Serafina of the Sacred Heart upon the order's foundation and her profession into it. She had once before been part of a religious order in which she received the name Maria Annunziata but discarded it when she left their ranks. Micheli was beatified in Benevento in 2011 after Pope Benedict XVI granted approval for her beatification to take place. Cardinal Angelo Amato presided over the celebration on the behalf of the pontiff. Clotilde Micheli was born in Imer, Austrian Empire on 11 September 1849. She received Confirmation at the age of three in 1852 from the Bishop of Trent Johann Nepomuk von Tschiderer zu Gleifheim. During her childhood she reported having her first apparition in which her guardian angel came to her with an invitation from the Blessed Mother to consecrate herself as a virgin to her. She had her First Communion in 1858 at the age of nine and after this felt a strong pull to the religious life; she spent her nights in long periods of adoration to the Eucharist. As a child she received her education from her mother who instilled in her a sense of virtue and the fundamental Christian ethics. On the night of 2 August 1867 - in the parish church of her hometown - the Blessed Mother appeared with angels around her and showed her that it was Micheli's mission to found a religious congregation that would have as its crucial aim the adoration of God and Jesus Christ as the spirit under her patronage. Micheli received the consolation of a friend and went to Venice for the spiritual guidance of Domenico Agostini - future cardinal and Patriarch of Venice - who advised her to draft a Rule; she was frightened at the prospect of this and believed she had no inspiration so returned in sadness to her hometown having written nothing.