August 18 Venerable Mother Bentovoglio -USA!

 

Venerable Mother Mary Maddalena Bentivoglio, OSC: in the USA! (1834-1905)

August 18

"When the United States of America was celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Poor Clares had not yet made a foundation in this country. Maddalena Bentivoglio was, however, about to take care of that," wrote one Franciscan writer. 

           This saint-in-the-making, originally named "Anna Maria," was the twelfth child of Dominic and Angela Sandri Bentivoglio. She was nicknamed Annetta and was not a "saintly" child! At her first school, she was well known to the disciplinarian. 

            Her father was an official in the Papal States. A revolution in 1848 drove Pope Pius IX and the Bentivoglio family into a two-year exile. In 1865, as the Civil War in the United States was coming to an end, Annetta joined the Poor Clares at San Lorenzo, a community to which her sister Costanza already belonged. Annetta took the religious name Mary Maddalena of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

            In 1874 a Third Order sister from Minnesota in the USA came to Italy to seek candidates for a new community she was establishing in that state. The Pope at that time, Pius the Ninth (Pio Nono), gave permission to Maddalena and Costanza to establish a house of Poor Clares in Minnesota.  Once they arrived in New York, however, the Franciscan priest chosen as their spiritual director decided not to continue on to Minnesota. The sisters had to write to the Franciscan Minister General for guidance. He advised finding any bishop in the USA willing to host a Poor Clare monastery; if that failed, they should return to Italy.

           The sisters made unsuccessful attempts to establish monasteries in New York,  Philadelphia, and New Orleans. In August 1877, Maddalena and her companions (with two new recruits from New Orleans) arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, where they did establish a monastery. Other monasteries were established in 1880 in Omaha, Nebraska, with foundations to follow in New Orleans in 1885 and Evansville, Indiana in 1897. This helped put to rest any doubt as to whether the contemplative life could attract religious vocations in America. Mother Maddalena died in Evansville on August 18, 1905. Her cause is in process in Rome.

For more information about Mother Bentivoglio and her gift of needlework, as well as the spread of the Poor Clares from Evansville to St. Louis:

https://vocationblog.com/2025/09/mother-mary-maddalena-bentivoglio-o-s-c-liturgical-embroidery/