Venerable Mariantonia Samà

Mariantonia Samà (2 March 1875 - 27 May 1953) was an Italian Roman Catholic. Samà lived alone with her mother until 1920 aiding her in domestic duties while coping with their poor state due to her father's death before Samà was born. But drinking unsafe water after working in the fields caused great infirmities and often-violent convulsions that the populace believed her to be possessed. In the town lived a baroness who organized for her to be taken to a Carthusian convent to be exorcised but this failed. Samà was healed after the convent's prior put her in front of a statue of Bruno of Cologne and lived in relative peace for a while before being bedridden with another illness that she never recovered from. Her mother tended to her until her death in 1920 at which point the populace as well as nuns and Redemptorist priests came to visit her to aid her and provide for her while also seeking her out for advice. Samà was close to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart who placed a black veil upon her head as if she were a nun too. The beatification process had been called for since her death since the population came to believe she was a saint due to her reputation for personal holiness. The calls for such a process grew in the 2000s to the point where the formal cause was launched in her province. The process culminated on 18 December 2017 after Pope Francis confirmed her heroic virtue and named her as Venerable as a result. He also approved a decree confirming a miracle attributed to her in mid-2020; her beatification was celebrated in Catanzaro on 3 October 2021. Mariantonia Samà was born on 2 March 1875 as the sole child born to Bruno Samà (d. 20.06.1874) and Marianna Vivino (d. 24.02.1920). Her father had died a few months prior to her birth which left her mother alone to take care of the newborn child. The pair were poor and lived in a small home in a small lane almost five feet wide with dim light. Her baptism was celebrated on 3 March in the local parish.