Blessed Elia di San Clemente

Teodora Fracasso, OCD (17 January 1901 - 25 December 1927) - in religion, Elia di San Clemente - was an Italian Catholic nun in the Carmelites. Fracasso once had the name of "Agnes" during a stint in the Third Order of Saint Dominic. Fracasso's inclinations to become a nun stemmed from her childhood after having had a vision in 1911 in which Thérèse of Lisieux told her that she would become a nun; this realization came a decade later when she entered the convent in her native Bari where she remained for the remainder of her life. Her beatification cause was opened on 11 September 1980 and she became titled as a Servant of God when the cause commenced and this led to the confirmation of her heroic virtue which allowed for Pope John Paul II to name her as Venerable. Pope Benedict XVI later approved her beatification which Cardinal José Saraiva Martins presided over on 18 March 2006 on the pope's behalf in the Bari Cathedral. Teodora Fracasso was born on 17 January 1901 in Bari as the third of nine children (four died as infants) to Giuseppe Fracasso and Pasqua Cianci; she received her baptism on 21 January in the San Giacomo parish church from her paternal uncle Carlo Fracasso. Fracasso had at least four sisters; her elder sisters were Prudence and Anna and her little sisters were Teodora Domenica and Nicola. Her father worked as a painter and decorator while her mother was a housewife. Fracasso received her Confirmation in 1903 from the Archbishop of Bari-Bitonto Giulio Vaccaro. In 1906 she claimed to have seen a beautiful woman in a dream moving among rows of blooming lilies who then disappeared in a sudden beam of light. Fracasso received her education as a child from the Stigmata Sisters and she studied at school until the third grade. In 1905 her parents decided it was time to relocate from their home in Saint Mark's Square to Via Piccinni into a little house with a little garden.