Bl. Maddalena Caterina Morano

Maddalena Morano was born in Chieri, near Turin, in 1847. Her father and five of her siblings died while she was a child, and at eight she began working at a loom. At fourteen she was hired as a nursery-school teacher.

At thirty she was turned away by two religious congregations as too old. In 1878 St John Bosco accepted her into the Salesian Sisters (Daughters of Mary Help of Christians). Sent to Sicily, she founded nineteen houses, a dozen youth centres and many schools over twenty-six years. She died in Catania in 1908 and was beatified in 1994.

Maddalena Caterina Morano was beatified in 1994.

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