Blessed Elena Guerra

Saint Elena Guerra, OSS (23 June 1835 – 11 April 1914) was an Italian Catholic religious sister who founded the Oblates of the Holy Spirit. Guerra was a strong proponent of the Holy Spirit as a motivation to do pious works. She dedicated her life particularly to the education of Chinese and African girls. Elena Guerra was born into a wealthy, aristocratic family in Lucca on 23 June 1835 as one of six children to Antonio Guerra and Faustina Franceschi. In her childhood she was known to be talented but timid in nature. Guerra made her Confirmation on 5 June 1843. Guerra first worked with the Vincentians, caring for the poor and the sick. Cholera struck Lucca in 1853 and she tended to the ill after her parents granted her permission to do so. Guerra studied French as well as music and art but also learnt Latin and the lives and works of the Church Fathers during an illness that spanned from 1857 to 1864 as she could not leave the house because of it. In 1866 she established a lay association dedicated to the education of girls under the patronage of Our Lady, St. Joseph and the patroness of Lucca, St. Zita One of her students was Gemma Galgani. Guerra travelled to Rome in 1870 to attend a session of the First Vatican Council that Pope Pius IX had convened. Guerra and her father made an Easter pilgrimage there in April 1870 and visited the tomb of Saint Peter before she was able to meet with the pope on 23 June 1870. In 1885 she wrote Pope Leo XIII and asked him to rekindle in the faithful devotion to the Holy Spirit. Leo XIII responded with an apostolic letter (Provida matris caritate). Encouraged, Guerra wrote thirteen letters to Leo between 1895 and 1903. Leo issued the encyclical Divinum illud munus (subtitled "On the Holy Spirit") in 1897, in which he established the novena to the Holy Spirit to be prayed between the Feast of the Ascension and Pentecost. He followed this in 1902, with a letter to the bishops, Ad fovendum in Christiano populo.