Blessed Giuseppina Suriano

Giuseppina Suriano (18 February 1915 - 19 May 1950) was an Italian Roman Catholic member of the Catholic Action. Suriano was born to simple farmers near Palermo and became a noticeable and integral figure in Catholic Action during her life while also working alongside the Young Catholic Action movement for a brief period of time. Suriano was beatified in Loreto on 5 September 2004 on the occasion of the visit of Pope John Paul II there. Giuseppina Suriano was born near Palermo in 1915 to Giuseppe Suriano and Graziella Costantino. Her baptism was celebrated on 6 March 1915 in the local parish church of SS. Maria Annunziata. Suriano was often called "Pina" as a shortened version of her birthname. Her religious education came from her parents and her grandparents and in 1919 she began to attend a kindergarten that the Collegiate Sisters of San Antonio managed. In 1921 she began to attend a public school in Partinico and her teachers there admired her for her virtues and she left in 1927. One of her teachers was Margherita Drago. In 1922 she received her First Communion and the Confirmation. In 1922 Giuseppina she became a member of Catholic Action. Her local parish priest, Antonio Cataldo, became her spiritual director and confessor around this time. Giuseppina served from 1939 until 1948 as the secretary to the movement while from 1945 to 1948 serving as the president of the Youth Catholic Action movement. In 1948 she established the Association of the Daughters of Mary and served as its president until her death. Suriano desired to become a nun but this dream never materialized, for her mother was opposed to her religious activism for she wanted her daughter to wed and settle down. On 29 April 1932 with her spiritual director's permission, she made a private vow to remain chaste and renewed this vow each month. She also rejected all marriage proposals that men put forth to her.