Blessed Teresa Grillo Michel

Teresa Grillo Michel (born Teresa Grillo; 25 September 1855 – 25 January 1944), also known by her religious name Maria Antonia, was an Italian Roman Catholic nun and the founder of the Little Sisters of Divine Providence. Grillo was a widow who also part of the Third Order of Saint Francis; she entered the religious life following the death of her husband. Grillo studied in Turin and Lodi before returning to her hometown Alessandria where she married. But her husband died sometime later leaving her in a deep depression that came a call to help the poor. Grillo founded a religious congregation that would expand into Latin America and she would also maintain contact with important individuals such as Luigi Orione and Clelia Merloni both of whom she befriended. Her beatification was celebrated in Turin in mid-1998. Teresa Grillo was born on 25 September 1855 in Spinetta Marengo (now part of Alessandria) as the last of five children born to Giuseppe Grillo and Maria Antonietta Parvopassau. Her mother came from an aristocratic line while her father was the head doctor at the civil hospital in Alessandria and who died in her childhood in 1867. Her baptism was held on 26 September 1855 and she was baptized as "Maddalena". Her Confirmation was celebrated in the diocesan cathedral on 1 October 1867 at a Mass that Bishop Giacomo Antonio Colli presided over. Grillo made her First Communion in 1872. She attended school in Turin (her mother decided to move there since Grillo's older brother Francesco was attending college there) and later enrolled at a boarding school in Lodi on 13 November 1867 (just after her father died) that the Ladies of Loretto managed. It was there that Grillo graduated in 1873 before she returned to Alessandria where she married Captain Giovanni Battista Michel on 2 August 1877 (the couple did not have children). The couple lived first in Caserta before moving to Acireale and Catania.