Servant of God Benigna Consolata Ferrero 5 - 1 9 1 6 8 H ELL 1 8

ne day, Jesus showed the Inferno to received her habit and changed her the , Sister Benigna name to Benigna Consolata. On the 23rd Consolata Ferrero, and said to her: “See, of November 1909 she proclaimed her OBenigna, that fire!… Above that abyss I religious profession, and on the 28th of have stretched out, like in a netlike web, November 1912 her solemn vows. the children of my mercy, so that the During the nine years of her clois- souls do not fall in there. Those however tered life (1906-1925), she had as her who want to be damned, they go there to spiritual director Monsignor Alfonso open the threads with their own hands Archi, the Bishop of Como. and fall in, and once they are in not even Sister Benigna, meanwhile, achieved my goodness can save them. These souls a very elevated mystical state, receiving are chased by my mercy much more than extraordinary graces, immersed in the divine a wrongdoer is chased by the police, but love and trusting friendship of Jesus, so they run away from my mercy!” much so that she herself, illuminated, The Servant of God Benigna defined herself as “secretary of the Consolata Ferrero was born in , Sacred Heart.” on the 6th of August 1885, in a Her spiritual “Diary,” already begun well-to-do and very religious family. in 1902, tells of mystical experiences and Educated according to Christian conversations with Christ. The message principles, she followed the course of of Sister Benigna is a hymn to the Love elementary and classical studies. She of God and of neighbor; Love is the attended school for religion and knew theology of God. Canon Luigi Boccardo Her spirituality is soaked in everyday (1861-1936). life, from the rising applied in the living Under his direction, since 1898, the of each day, even in the most banal of acts. fifteen year old Maria Consolata Ferrero Her spiritual experience is reconnected fulfilled the vocation to the religious life, to the “spiritual infancy” in the example of to which she felt within herself. St. Teresa of the Child Jesus, St. Margaret Discerning the aspirations of the young Mary Alacoque, St. Faustina Kowalska, girl, the Canon Boccardo guided her and Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity. The toward the Order of the Visitation. At Servant of God died at only 31 years of twenty-two years old, on the 30th of age, on the 1st of September 1916, in the December 1907, she entered among the monastery in Como. She was buried in Visitations of Como, and full of zeal and the church and since her death, her tomb fervor, she forged ahead through the is continuously visited by the faithful, stages of initiation to the cloistered life. attracted to the fame of her sanctity, ask On the 5th of November 1908 she for graces. © Associazione Carlo Acutis