Venerable Isabela de Rosis

Madre Isabella de Rosis (1842–1911) was an Italian religious sister and foundress of the congregation of the Reparatrix Sisters of the Sacred Heart. In December 2005, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed her as a Venerable Servant of God, the first step on the road to canonization. Mother Isabella de Rosis was born on 9 June 1842. Her parents were Baron Domiziano de Rosis and Baroness Gabriella Francesca Berlingieri, nobles of Rossano, Calabria, Italy. The eldest of nine children, she was sent to the Royal boarding school of Saint Clare in Naples, an exclusive school for the nobility, at the age of 8. While in the boarding school she lived the daily life of the sisters, shared their life of prayer, and practiced mortification and penance. She was an example of piety, firmness, discipline, and silence, and loved always to be recollected. At the age of 15 Isabella consecrated herself to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus with the Formula of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, promising love and reparation. She realised this saint's spirituality during her stay in the boarding school of St. Clare. Her years at the boarding school had a decisive impact on her. At the boarding school, she obtained the basis of her spiritual formation and were her religious vocation matured. Between the years 1860–1874 she tried to enter in the different religious institutes devoted to the Sacred Heart; the Pia Unione of the Handmaids, Oblates of the Sacred Heart, Daughters of Charity in Paris to name a few. Finally, after receiving spiritual direction from her confessor, she founded the Congregation of the Reparatrix Sisters of the Sacred Heart on 24 October 1875. Her devotion to the Sacred Heart symbolized the spiritual journey that Mother Isabella travelled and embodied the essence of this devotion. Her spirituality represented her most typical expressions: love, the practice of virtue, prayer, consecration, penance and reparation.