Life has only one face - LOVE.
- Venerable Benedetta
Pro Sanctity 2007
SAINTS NEXT DOOR SERIES
DAYS OF PRAYER
With Venerable Benedetta Bianchi Porro
August 8, 1936 – January 23, 1964 (see article below on her life)
Monday, January 22, 2007
9:30 - 2:00 P.M.
BRING BAG LUNCH
Refreshments and Italian dessert served.
Cost: Love offering
St. Peter’s Parish Church
2706 Leavenworth
Presentations, Holy Hour for Life and Lunch
We are praying in union with the MARCH FOR LIFE in Washington, DC
Children are welcome with RSVP—We would like to provide some fun and faith for them too.
Led by Teresa Monaghen and Francesca Dammerman from Gretna, NE - Relative of Venerable Benedetta
Mass option: St. Peter’s has Mass at 8:00 am and we invite people to spend a little time in prayer afterwards before the day starts.
Call Pro Sanctity for details: 402-289-2670
...a call to holiness in daily life.
Venerable Benedetta Bianchi Porro
August 8, 1936 – January 23, 1964
"I often think of what a marvelous thing life is, even in its most terrible aspects, and my soul is filled with love and gratitude towards God." (Benedetta)
BENEDETTA BIANCHI PORRO was born in the village of Dovadola (Forlì) on the 8th of August 1936. In 1951 she moved with her family to Sirmione on Lake Garda. It was at this time that the first symptoms of serious illness began to appear with deafness and atrophy of the legs. At the age of 17 she enrolled in the faculty of medicine at Milan University.
This was the beginning of her Calvary. Long stays in hospital, endless consultations, operations, suffering, increasing disablement and humiliation could not make her give up her dream of becoming a doctor. She wrote in her diary, "I’ve always dreamed of becoming a doctor. I want to live, fight, sacrifice myself for people everywhere".
Inexorably beleaguered by disease she was forced to leave university when she had just reached her last exam. Deaf, totally paralyzed, deprived of her physical senses, she went on, following a final operation, to become blind as well. Her only remaining links with the world were a thread of a voice and one hand with some remaining sensibility which was used for communicating with her in a deaf and hard of hearing alphabet.
Benedetta bore supreme witness to the suffering and risen Christ. Crucified herself, she sang the wonders of life, she forgot herself for other people, she made the desert of her life flower with priceless friendships, she lived her suffering as a mystery of love and a source of grace.
To everyone who came in contact with her she communicated hope. Her faith worked wonders. Benedetta's earthly life came to an end on the 23rd of January 1964 at Sirmione. At the moment of her death a white rose bloomed in the garden beneath her window.
To learn more about Benedetta, please join Francesca and myself on January 22, 2007 at St. Peter's Parish in Omaha.
Blessings, Teresa and Francesca
Prayer for the glorification of the Servant of God Benedetta.
Our Father, we thank You for giving us Benedetta, a dear sister.
Through the joys and sorrows, with which You have filled her brief earthly life, You molded her into a living image of Your Son. With Benedetta at our side we ask You, Father, that, by fully and unconditionally accepting Your will, we may feel close to You and to our brothers and sisters in love, in suffering and in hope. Allow that her radical testimony of the saving power of the cross may teach us that suffering is grace and that Your will is joy. Father, bless the Church with the Light of Your Spirit, that we may soon acknowledge Benedetta among the exemplar witnesses of Your Love. Amen.