Magdalen of Canossa

St. Magdalene of Canossa, F.D.C.C.
Virgin and foundress
Born	March 1, 1774 Verona, Republic of Venice
Died	April 10, 1835 Verona, Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, Austrian Empire
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church (Canossian Daughters and Sons of Charity)
Beatified	December 8, 1941 by Pope Pius XII
Canonized	October 2, 1988 by Pope John Paul II
Feast	May 8

St. Magdalene of Canossa, F.D.C.C., (1774–1835) was an Italian Religious Sister and foundress. She was a leading advocate for the poor in her region, and has been canonized by the Catholic Church.

Magdalene was born on March 1, 1774, into an ancient and prominent Veronese family. Her father was Marquis Ottavio di Canossa and her mother, Teresa Szluha, a Hungarian countess. Their first two children died soon after they were born and therefore Magdalene was the third-born. After her, her mother gave birth to another boy, who died right after the delivery. Finally, in 1776, the male heir that her family desired was born, Bonifacio, and after him two other girls. In 1779 her father died in an accident. Two years later her mother left Canossa palace to marry the Marquis Zanetti of Mantua. The children were placed under the guardianship of their uncle. In 1791 she spent time in a Carmelite monastery but discerned that this was not her vocation. She returned to her family life at Canossa Palace, and undertook the running the family's large estate.

In Verona Magdalene saw a city in which the poor suffered extreme poverty, only made worse by the social upheavals caused by the invasions of the French Revolutionary Army and the opposing forces of the Austrian Empire, which eventually gained control of her native city. This situation provoked her desire to serve the needs of the unfortunate.

Using her inheritance, Magdalene began charitable work among the poor of the city. On April 1, 1808, she was given an abandoned monastery where she took in two poor girls from the slum of the San Zeno neighborhood of the city to care for them and provide them an education. On the following May 8, she moved out of her ancestral palace and moved into the monastery, now called the Convent of St. Joseph, where she was soon joined by other women, with whom she formed the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor.

The new congregation started to care for poor children and to serve in the city's hospitals. As word of their work spread, they were requested to start new communities in other cities of the region. Soon there were convents of the Canossian Sisters established in Venice (1812), Milan (1816), Bergamo 1820 and Trent (1824). Magdalene drew up a Rule for the congregation, and it received formal approval by Pope Leo XII on December 23, 1828.

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