Bl. Mary Magdalene Martinengo

“Il facchino del monastero – the Monastery’s handyman”! That was the nickname the Capuchin Poor Clares of Saint Mary of the Snow (Santa Maria della Neve) in Brescia, Northern Italy gave Sister Mary Magdalen Martinengo. During her thirty two years in religious life she had been at one stage or another novice, dish-washer, kitchen hand, porter, gardener, baker, sweeper, wardrobe keeper, laundress, wool weaver, shoe maker, cellarer, seamstress, chancellor or secretary, embroiderer, sacristy assistant, Novice Mistress, turn style keeper, Vicaress and Abbess. For all intents and purposes, she appeared strong and healthy and, until just before her death, she managed to keep concealed her numerous bodily infirmities and frighteningly harsh mortifications and penances. Yet when she entered the Monastery in 1905, at the age 18, her physique and facial features were seen as being so delicate that, to the Capuchin Nuns living there, she looked like someone made of wax who would need to be kept under glass. Wherein, then, lay the source of Sister Mary Magdalen’s abundant strength and surprisingly tenacious perseverance? Without doubt it was to be found in her secret inner life which, even from her childhood years, she had nurtured with almost continuous prayer, harsh penances and an enraptured love of God. She died on July 27, 1737. Sister Mary Magdalen was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on the 3rd of June 1900 and, in 1972, her relics, which had lain in at least two other Churches in Brescia, were finally laid to rest in the Church of the city’s newly built Capuchin Poor Clare Monastery. Her feast is kept on July 27.