Maria Crocifissa di Rosa was the founder of the religious order the Handmaids of Charity and a woman whose deep devotion to Christ Crucified inspired her order of sisters. Maria was born as Paola Francesca di Rosa to an affluent family of Brescia, Italy on November 6, 1813.

Although her family was wealthy, they were not exempt from hardship. Paola’s mother died when Paola was only eleven, imprinting on the young Paola the knowledge that the cross was a part of each Christian’s life.

Paola was educated by the Visitation Sisters in her youth, but left school in her teenage years and began to assist her father in running his household and estates. By the age of nineteen, Paola had taken over her father’s spinning mill, and befriended the many young women who worked there, and had to live far from their homes in the country to work at the mill during the week. Paola’s work at the mill earned Paola her father’s deep respect and esteem for his strong, competent daughter.

In 1836, when Paola was in her early twenties, a cholera epidemic broke out in Brescia. Paola transformed herself into a nurse, caring for women and children afflicted by the disease. She became a well-known and well-loved figure at the hospital in Brescia.

Paola left the mill and made caring for women her full-time occupation. She directed a home and school for orphaned girls and a home for women who were deaf and mute.

In 1840, Paola founded the community, The Pious Union, that eventually became the religious congregation, Handmaids of Charity when it was approved by Pope Pius IX in 1850. She took the name Maria Crocifissa di Rosa, as a sign of the importance of the cross in the Christian life. Maria’s own spirituality and her order are sprung from her deep understanding that all Christian life is modeled off of Christ’s cross. And love for Christ Crucified and the desire to ease his sufferings led Maria and her companions to care for the poor and suffering in hospitals, and the wounded on the battlefields of Northern Italy.

Maria Crocifissa’s guiding motto for her order was: “Charity without limits for the sick who represent Jesus Christ.” The Handmaids of Charity’s charism to this day echoes this founding sentiment. They seek to bring hope to those who are sick or dying, through their faith in Christ, which manifests itself in their works of charity. All they do is for, with, and in Christ.

Maria Crocifissa died in Brescia on December 15, 1855, at the age of forty-two. She was canonized just under one hundred years later by Pope Pius XII in 1954. Her order of sisters, the Handmaidens of Charity, continues to serve the poor and suffering in Italy and throughout the world.

St. Maria Crocifissa di Rosa, burning with love for the suffering Christ present in the poor—pray for us!