Maria Gabriella Sagheddu

Blessed Maria Gabriella Sagheddu, O.C.S.O.
The Blessed Maria Gabriella in her native Dorgalese dress
Nun
Born	17 March 1914 Dorgali, Sardinia, Kingdom of Italy
Died	23 April 1939 Trappistine Monastery, Grottaferrata, Rome, Italy
Beatified	25 January 1983, Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, Rome, Italy, by Pope John Paul II
Major shrine	Chapel of Unity, Monastery of Our Lady of St. Joseph, Vitorchiano, Viterbo, Italy
Feast	April 22
Patronage	Ecumenism

Maria Gabriella Sagheddu, O.C.S.O., was an Italian Trappistine nun, who was born in Sardinia in 1914 and died of tuberculosis in the Trappist monastery of Grottaferrata in 1939, at the age of 25. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1983. Because of her spiritual devotion to Christian unity, for which she had offered her life, she was declared a patron saint of the movement by the Catholic Church.

She was born Maria Sagghedu into a family of shepherds in Dorgali, an eastern coastal town of Sardinia, on March 17, 1914, the fifth in a family of eight children. The family lost their father in 1919. She was said to be obstinate as a child, but was also known to be loyal and obedient. "She would say no but she would go at once", is said of her. At the end of her primary studies, she had to leave school to help out at home where she showed herself serious and endowed with a great sense of duty.

Motivated to deepen her piety after the death of her younger sister, Sagghedu enrolled in a Catholic youth group called "Azione Cattolica" when she was eighteen. She began to instruct the local youth in the Catholic faith and to help the aged of the region. In the process, she began to intensify her prayer life. At first, she taught catechism with a stick in hand. But one day the local priest took away the stick and replaced it with a note that said, "Arm yourself with patience, not a stick." Maria accepted the criticism and changed her methods.

At the age of twenty, Sagghedu entered the Trappistine Abbey of Grottaferrata, near Rome, on the Italian mainland, where she was given the religious name of Maria Gabriella. The abbess of the monastery at that time there was Mother Maria Pia Gullini, O.C.S.O., whose enthusiasm for ecumenism (a fruit of the efforts of Abbé Paul Couturier) was passed on to the community. Devoted to this cause, she offered herself as a spiritual sacrifice for the unity of the Christian church during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity of 1938. She then immediately fell ill with tuberculosis, and, after suffering for 15 months, died on 23 April 1939. Significantly, the Gospel reading for that Sunday included the words, "There will be one flock and one shepherd. (John 10:16)"