Bl. Rosa Maria Benedetta Gattorno Custo

Rosa Gattorno was born in Genoa in 1831 to a well-off family. At twenty-one she married her cousin Gerolamo Custo and moved to Marseilles. Business failure soon drove them back to Genoa in poverty. Their first child was left deaf after an illness, her husband's attempt to make a living abroad failed, and he died after six years of marriage. Soon afterwards their youngest child died too.

As a widow she gave herself to the poor and sick of Genoa. In 1866 in Piacenza she founded the Daughters of St Anne to care for the sick, the poor and children. The congregation spread across Italy and abroad within her lifetime. She died in Rome in 1900. John Paul II beatified her in 2000.

Poverty, a child's disability, and the deaths of her husband and son came within a few years. She later described these losses as what turned her completely towards God.

Rosa Maria Benedetta Gattorno Custo was beatified in 2000.

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