Bl. Giovanna Francesca Michelotti

Anna Michelotti was born in 1843 at Annecy in Savoy. Her father died when she was young, and the family was poor, yet they kept caring for the sick poor. This shaped her calling.

She studied in Lyon. After her mother and brother died in 1863 she joined a small community in Lyon, the Little Servants, as Sister Jeanne-Françoise of the Visitation, but it broke up in 1871.

She went to Turin, and in 1874 she took the religious habit there with two companions. In 1875 her new congregation, the Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart, was approved to nurse the sick poor free of charge. She died in Turin in 1888, and Paul VI beatified her in 1975.

Giovanna Francesca Michelotti was beatified in 1975.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.