Saint Giuseppina Vannini

Giuditta Vannini (7 July 1859 – 23 February 1911) – also known as Giuseppina – was an Italian Roman Catholic nun who became a Camillian. Together with Luigi Tezza she established the religious congregation known as the Daughters of Saint Camillus. She and her two siblings were orphaned as children and were placed in different homes; she was raised and educated in Rome under nuns where her vocation to the religious life was strengthened. Vannini later tried joining a religious order but was forced to leave during her novitiate period after suffering from ill health. She and Tezza met in 1891 and founded a religious congregation of which Vannini served as Superior General until her death while Tezza was exiled to Peru around 1900. Her beatification process opened in the 1950s, though its formal introduction came in the late 1970s at which point she became titled as a Servant of God; she became titled as Venerable in 1992 upon papal confirmation of her heroic virtue. Pope John Paul II presided over Vannini's beatification on 16 October 1994. Pope Francis confirmed her canonization in mid-2019 and canonized her as a saint in Saint Peter's Square on 13 October 2019. Giuditta Vannini was the second of three children to the cook Angelo Vannini and Annunziata Papi; her two siblings were Giulia and Augusto. Her baptism was celebrated on 8 July in the Basilica di Sant'Andrea delle Fratte and she was given the baptismal names "Giuditta Adelaide Agata". The children were orphaned after her father died on 18 August 1863 when she was four (from a sudden and severe intestinal blockage in Ariccia) and her mother when she was seven (her mother remarried on 11 May 1865 but died on 6 November 1866); she was also separated from her siblings when she was sent to the Torlonia orphanage at Via Sant'Onofrio in Rome under the guidance of the Vincentian Sisters until 1883.