Blessed Maria Domenica Brun Barbantini

Maria Domenica Brun Barbantini (17 January 1789 - 22 May 1868) was an Italian Roman Catholic professed religious and the founder of the Camillian Sisters Ministers of the Sick. Barbantini served the ill throughout her entire life and she dedicated her life to God following the premature deaths of her husband and son. Barbantini's beatification was held in Saint Peter's Square in mid-1995. Maria Domenica Brun was born in 1789 in Lucca to the Swiss-born Pietro Brun and Giovanna Granducci. Three younger brothers and her father all died during her adolescence. Brun married Salvatore Barbantini on 22 April 1811 at the Cathedral of Saint Martin but her husband died that October. Her husband's death saw her - that moment - take a private vow of consecration to God and vowed to dedicate her life to the service of His people. Brun was pregnant at the point of her husband's death and soon gave birth to Lorenzo who died aged eight after a short illness. She soon turned her grief into service of the poor and abandoned sick people of her city. In the evenings, in all weather, she traveled with a glowing lantern the narrow and dark streets of Lucca seeking out sick and dying women abandoned in their homes. Other young women joined her. Barbantini died in 1868. The beatification process started in an informative process that Archbishop Arturo Marchi inaugurated on 6 May 1927 - in which all documentation pertaining to her life was compiled - and that Archbishop Antonio Torrini concluded in a special and solemn Mass on 6 February 1931; her writings received the approval of theologians to be in line with doctrine on 28 May 1935. Torrini later oversaw a supplementary process that spanned from 7 April 1937 until the following 10 July and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints validated both processes on 1 February 1986 while later receiving the official Positio in two parts in both 1988 and in 1990.