Venerable Luisa Guidotti Mistrali

Luisa Guidotti Mistrali (16 May 1932 – 6 July 1979) was an Italian laywoman of the Roman Catholic Church who worked in the missions in Rhodesia. She was a member of the Women's Medical Missions Association. Guidotti tended to the ill in several hospitals across Rhodesia and was even noted for taking care of Robert Mugabe's mother on one occasion. Her work saw hospitals expand to treat a greater number of patients and her work was appreciated nationwide which in part led to charges against her being dropped after she was accused of treating a guerrilla which she had in fact done. Her beatification process opened in 1995 in Modena. Luisa Guidotti Mistrali was born in mid-1932 in Parma as the first of three children to Camillo Guidotti and Anna Mistrali. Her mother was a baroness from Parma and her father's side owned the Fabbrico castle in Reggio Emilia for four centuries. Her mother died from an incurable disease in 1947 and her father decided to relocate with his children to Modena where her maternal aunt Maria assumed care for the three children. Mistrali's education was spent in Modena and she received a religious formation from Catholic Action whom she grew close to around that time. In 1957 she had her first encounter with the Women's Medical Missions Association and later joined them. Guidotti enrolled in a medicine course and graduated in May 1960 in Parma. Her education then allowed her in 1962 to specialize in Radiology at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome where she graduated from on 12 December 1962. Guidotti fostered a strong devotion to Saint Thomas More and chose him as her spiritual guide. On 1 August 1966 she received the crucifix of the missionaries from the Archbishop of Modena Giuseppe Amici. Guidotti left for Chirundu on 9 August 1966 after having met with Pope Paul VI not long before that. Guidotti arrived in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) on 10 August and began working in a hospital in the north, close to Zambia.