Religious Teachers Venerini

The Religious Teachers Venerini (abbreviated as M.P.V., Italian: Maestre Pie Venerini), are a religious institute in the Catholic Church founded in Italy by Saint Rose Venerini in 1685. They were the pioneers of free public education for girls in Italy. They are commonly called the Venerini Sisters.

The foundress of the institute, Rose Venerini, was born in Viterbo, Italy, in 1656, the daughter of a leading physician of the city. She felt a strong desire to serve God from her childhood. She entered briefly a Dominican monastery, but had to leave to care for her mother, after the unexpected death of her father.

Once home, Venerini searched for how she could still fulfill her commitment to God. She invited women and girls of the town to gather in her home to pray the rosary together. Conversations with them showed her the depth of their ignorance of both their Catholic faith and of general knowledge. Under the guidance of a Jesuit spiritual director, she gradually came to see answering the crying need for education as her calling, rather than the cloistered life.

On August 30, 1685, with the approval of the Bishop of Viterbo, Cardinal Urbano Sacchetti, and the collaboration of two friends, Gerolama Coluzzelli and Porzia Bacci, Venerini left her father’s home to begin her first school. The primary objective of the school was to give poor girls a complete Christian formation and to prepare them for life in society. Without great pretense, Rose opened the first public school for girls in Italy. The origins were humble but the impact was deep, and it did not take long to receive the recognition of the religious and civil authorities.

The initial steps were not easy. The three teachers had to face the resistance of clergy who considered the teaching of the catechism as their exclusive prerogative. But the harshest suspicion came from those who were scandalized by the boldness of this woman of the upper middle class of Viterbo, who had taken to heart the education of ignorant girls. Rose faced everything for the love of God and with her characteristic strength, continuing on the path that she had undertaken, by now sure that she was truly following the plan of God. The results proved her to be right. The same pastors later recognized the moral improvement which education had generated among the girls and their mothers.

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