Saint Rose Venerini

Rose Venerini (9 February 1656 – 7 May 1728), also called Rosa Venerini, was an Italian Roman Catholic saint and virgin who founded the first public schools for girls and young women in Italy. According to the Vatican document published on the occasion of Venerini's canonization in 2006, "Wherever a new school sprang up, in a short time a moral improvement could be noted in the youth". Her confraternity of teachers, after her death, was raised to a religious congregation called the Religious Teachers Venerini (or Venerini sisters), which worked with Italian immigrants in the U.S. and Switzerland established the first day care centers in the Northeastern U.S., and worked throughout the world. Her feast day is May 7. Rose Venerini was born on February 9, 1659, in Viterbo, Italy, to her father, Goffredo, a famous and accomplished doctor who was originally from Castellone di Suasa, in the Marche region of Italy, and her mother, Marzia Zampichetti, who was "of an ancient family of Viterbo". She had four siblings, Dominico, Maria Maddalena, Rosa, and Orazio. At the age of 7, Venerini made a vow to consecrate her life to God. At the age of 20, in the fall of 1676, on the advice of her father and after the death of her fiancé, she entered the Dominican Monastery of St. Catherine, where her aunt, Anna Cecilia, was also a nun and where she learned meditation and silent prayer. She left a few months later because she had to return home to care for her mother after her father's death. Her brother Domenico died at the age of 27; her mother also died two months later. Her sister, Maria Maddalena, married and left home; then another brother, Orazio, died, leaving only her and her last surviving brother, Orazio, at home. In May 1684, when she was 24 years old, Venerini began to gather the girls and women in her neighborhood in her home to pray the rosary.