The three new Servants of God are figures marked by surrender to God’s love, trust in his mercy and hope in his forgiveness.
Newsroom (30/08/2021 15:43, Gaudium Press) On Monday morning, Pope Francis received in audience the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro. After the meeting, the Cardinal announced that the Pontiff had authorised the Dicastery to promulgate the Decrees on the heroic virtues of three Servants of God.
Figures marked by surrender to God’s love, trust in his mercy and hope in his forgiveness, the three new Venerables are: Enrica Beltrame Quattrocchi, daughter of a couple beatified in 2001; Plácido Cortese, a Franciscan friar who died in the tortures inflicted by the Gestapo; and the young mother Maria Cristina Cella Mocellin.
Servant of God Enrica Beltrame Quattrocchi
Born on 6 April 1914, the Servant of God Enrica Beltrame Quattrocchi, was the last child of Blessed Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi and Maria Corsini, who died at the age of 98. Although she decided to follow the religious path of her brothers (two priests and a nun), her vocation called her to accompany her elderly parents.
She dedicated herself to teaching in the poorest neighbourhoods of the Italian capital, becoming Superintendent of the Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage in 1976. Her life was marked by various illnesses and economic difficulties. She found strength in prayer and frequent attendance at Holy Mass. She died on June 16, 2012 in Rome, Italy.
Servant of God Placido Cortese
Born on 7 March 1907 in Cherso, now Croatia, Placido Cortese entered the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, and was ordained a priest in 1930, serving in the Basilica of St Anthony in Padua.
During World War II, on behalf of the Apostolic Nuncio to Italy, Archbishop Francesco Borgongini Duca, he helped Croatians and Slovenes in the Italian concentration camps, especially in Chiesanuova, near Padua. His work was not well regarded by the Germans, who killed him after severe torture on 8 October 1944.
Servant of God Maria Cristina Cella Mocellin
Born on August 18, 1969 at Cinisello Balsamo in the province of Milan, Italy, the Servant of God Maria Cristina Cella Mocellin was a faithful lay person and mother of a family. Her journey of vocational discernment began in the community of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians of Don Bosco during her school years.
Feeling called to marriage, she married in 1991, in spite of being weakened by a sarcoma in her left leg. After various treatments, the couple had two children, but as soon as she discovered she was pregnant with her third child, the disease reappeared. The mother chose to continue the pregnancy, undergoing treatments that would not put the baby’s life at risk. Maria Cristina died at the age of 26, in Bassano del Grappa, Italy, on 22 October 1995. (EPC)