Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds of Jesus

Mary Frances of the Five Wounds, TOSF, (Italian: Maria Francesca delle Cinque Piaghe, born Anna Maria Gallo,, 25 March 1715 – 7 October 1791), was an Italian Third Order Franciscan who is honored as a saint in the Catholic Church. She was born Anna Maria Gallo, the daughter of Francesco Gallo and Barbara Basinsin, in the Quartieri Spagnoli (Spanish Quarter) of Naples, a red-light district of the city, still known for its high crime. According to tradition, another saint, the Jesuit, Francis de Geronimo, predicted her future sanctity while she was still an infant. Her family was of the middle class, but her father, a weaver of gold lace, was a very violent man, who regularly abused his family physically, often severely. When Gallo was sixteen, her father attempted to force her into a marriage with a young man of means who was seeking her hand. She refused and asked to join the Franciscan Third Order, through which she could live out a religious life in the family home. The friars of Naples were part of the reform of Peter of Alcantara, and they and the tertiaries under their rule were known for the strictness of their lives. Through the intervention of a friar, Father Theophilus, permission to enter the Order was eventually granted by her father. Gallo was received into the order on 8 September 1731 and began wearing the Franciscan religious habit. She also adopted the use of the religious name, out of her devotion to the Blessed Mother, Francis of Assisi and the Passion of Christ. She continued to live in the family home. She took as her spiritual director, the Franciscan friar, John Joseph of the Cross, while her confessor was the Barnabite priest, Francis Xavier Bianchi, and she began to be known among her neighbors for her work of charity, helping the poor of the sector. She was a person of deep prayer, often spending long hours in meditation.