A New Blessed for the Church

A gift, and a reminder of all the stories of sanctity yet unknown or unremembered:

Blessed Guido Maria Conforti, Bishop of Parma in the times of Anna Maria Adorni wrote after her death that "her charity was without limits, it shone also in the darkest place of expiation, deprived of the light of truth.

"From the dismal jails where derelict souls received from that angel the word of comfort, of resignation, of peace, it extended itself in the miserable shacks," he said, "where the poor found aid in her, refreshment to their sorrows; to the bed of the infirm to which she gave, with maternal charity, all the physical and moral healings required by the necessities of each one."

Blessed Adorni's is the latest of a number of beatifications in the Catholic Church in recent months. Among others, English Cardinal John Henry Newman, Italian Chiara "Luce" Badano and Spanish Friar Leopold de Alpandeire have also been declared blesseds in separate ceremonies in their homelands. Later this month, on Oct. 17, the canonizations of Australia's Bl. Mary MacKillop, Canada's Bl. Andre Bessette and four others will take place in St. Peter's Square.