Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli

Giuseppina Nicoli, DC (18 November 1863 – 31 December 1924) was an Italian Catholic member of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul who served as a catechist in Sardinia. She held several positions of leadership in Turin and elsewhere. Her cause for canonization was started under Pope Paul VI in 1966 and she was declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006. Cardinal José Saraiva Martins beatified Nicoli in 2008 on the behalf of the pontiff. Her feast is the date of her beatification, February 3. Giuseppina Nicoli was born in Pavia on 18 November 1863 as the fifth of ten children to Carlo Nicoli - a magistrate. Nicoli studied in Pavia and Voghera where she achieved excellent results. Nicoli became a member of the Vincentians at their San Salvario house in Turin on 24 September 1883. She was vested in the habit in late 1883 while in Paris. On 1 January 1885 her superiors dispatched her to the island of Sardinia where she served the poor and aided her order in a series of social initiatives targeted at the poor and orphaned. She dealt with the victims of a cholera outbreak in 1886. She made her simple vows on 24 December 1888. In June 1899 she became the director of the Sassari orphanage and there taught catechism to the poor and illiterate as well as to the daughters of rich families who had no religious instruction whatsoever. Nicoli encouraged Eucharistic Adoration and she supported the "Associazione dei Figli di Maria" while also serving as the director of the "Associazione delle Figlie di Maria". In 1893 she contracted tuberculosis that remained with her and corroded her health. In 1910 her superior summoned her to Turin and - until August 1914 - served as the provincial administrator for the order there and was then sent back to Sardinia when her superiors noted her great contributions to the order's presence there. In Turin she also had served as the directress of the order's novitiate from 1912 until a mere nine months after.