Vatican City, May 23, 2010 / 09:18 am
The Holy Father thanked God for Blessed Teresa Manganiello, a "luminous witness to the Gospel," after the Regina Coeli prayer on Sunday. The recently beatified saint is remembered for her humility and penitential spirit.
Blessed Manganiello was beatified in a ceremony presided over by Archbishop Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, in Benevento, Italy on Saturday with 10,000 people on hand for the celebration.
She was the 11th child of a farming family in the southern Italian city of Montefusco. The Holy Father remembered the simple and humble life she spent between working in the home and praying at the local Church of St. Egidio, where she became a lay member of the Franciscans' Third Order.
In an article published in L'Osservatore Romano this week, the postulator for her cause, Luigi Porsi, spoke of her deeply spiritual life which was "imbued above all with a poor spirit" and was shared between these two "poles of attraction," Church and home.
Living always with a penitential spirit, all the way up to her death of tuberculosis in 1876, Blessed Manganiello said that she was asked by God to offer up her sufferings for the reparation of sins. For her, Porsi said, "that meant wanting to be like Christ crucified and demonstrate all of her love to him."
He recounted the young girl's friendly demeanor, the love she held for not just her family and neighbors, but for all people, and the way she took in and nursed those who needed assistance.
The Holy Father said on Sunday after praying the Regina Coeli, "As St. Francis, she sought to imitate Jesus Christ offering sufferings and penances for the reparation of sins, she was full of love for neighbor, and she did everything she could for everyone, especially for the poor and sick."
Archbishop Amato, who concelebrated the beatification rite with 165 other priests and bishops, reflected on the significance of the event, saying that "without holiness the Church cannot exist.
"This is the great pentecostal gift that the Church offers all of us: the everlasting and edifying spectacle of holiness."