Venerable Maria Teresa Scandola

Maria Giuseppa Scandola, MSV, (26 January 1849 – 1 September 1903) was an Italian member of the Missionary Sisters of Verona, also known as the Comboni Missionary Sisters. She served in what is now South Sudan, where she offered up her life in 1903. The cause for Scandola's beatification was opened by the Bishop of Verona in 1977. The cause has since been accepted for investigation by the Holy See, due to which she is referred to as Venerable. She was born Maria Teresa Scandola in 1849 in Verona, the daughter of Antonio Scandola and Giuseppina Leso. She met Daniel Comboni – later to be declared a saint – in 1871, who discussed with her his work of evangelization in Central Africa, and his vision of involving women in the mission. Scandola agreed to enter the religious order he envisioned to accomplish this, to be called the Institute of the Pious Mothers of Africa. She was the second woman to join the new foundation. In January of the following year, she entered the novitiate of the new religious order which Comboni had established in Verona, being given the religious habit and her new religious name of Maria Giuseppa. She professed perpetual religious vows on 19 March 1877. Scandola and four other Comboni Sisters left Verona with Comboni the following 12 December for their mission in Africa, the first European women to serve as missionaries in that region of Africa. She then worked to help children with their education and spiritual development in various towns of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. On 21 June 1903 she arrived in Lul, located on the banks of the White Nile, for her new mission, where she learned the Shilluk language. She taught the people that "there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for another" and that true love is this: "to know the Father and Jesus Christ who wants everyone to be saved".