Every year since 2013 around the Feast of St. Bakhita we have researched, discovered and written about trafficked girls that were rescued and sent to Visitation Monasteries and boarding schools in the 1800’s.
This year we will share about some young women that were sent to the Visitation Monastery in Salo Italy. While the tragic history of enslaved peoples in the USA includes their presence in some American Visitation Monasteries, our European counterparts were cooperating with holy clergy to free these young girls and give them a home, a school and often a vocation, within the Visitation.
Salo Visitation Monastery
In February 1850, Mother Porcelli forwarded questions to the vicar general of the diocese to obtain the permission to welcome two of the African girls that Father Olivieri brought from Cairo. And on June 6 Father Olivieri arrived at the monastery taking Zingazzi with him about five years old and Marium , nine, who were enthusiastically welcomed in community and entrusted to the special care of a sister. “They console us greatly – the nuns write – with their piety, docility and gratitude”
On 12 August the vicar general, Msgr. Ferdinando Lucchi, who concluded the annual visit to the community with his “great satisfaction-, administered baptism to them. Zingazzi received the name of Giuseppina Angelica and Marium that of Teresa.
Father Olivieri whose lifework it became to rescue these trafficked children, returned again in 1858 to entrust to the nuns Adamher, aged nine or ten, a child of lively intelligence and good heart who was baptized with the name Giulia. On 2 July he brought Nicolina, who had already been baptized in Cairo, and Morisilla, younger than her, who received baptism taking the name of Giuseppina
Another girl will still be led to the monastery in 1879 , this time from Father Verri , co-worker of Fr Olivieri and friend of St John Bosco. The coadjutor bishop of Brescia, Msgr. Corna Pellegrini, during his visit personally baptized her on March 25, 1879, with the greatest possible solemnity , in the parish church of Salò to awaken feelings of fervor in the population.
Lively and very sensitive, all these little girls spontaneously entered the life of the monastery.The Visitation Order at that time had boarding schools and children were no novelty to the Sisters.
Zingazzi and Mariumè.
The first, strong-willed and of precocious intelligence, manifested a balance wit and wisdom beyond her age. Joy and amiability are the key notes that stood out. The encounter with the Lord Jesus, considered above all in His passion of love for men, deeply touched her heart. Not without having first overcome internal resistance, Zingazzi asked to be admitted to the novitiate. She was emotionally accepted by the chapter, she began the year that she should have led lead her to profession. But her novitiate lasted only a few months that she passed with tremendous physical suffering. She, in bed, was always with a smile on her face. She made the vows in articulo mortis receiving the new name of Colomba Felice. Her death really did something moving for the sisters who assisted her.. Before the last breath, witnesses say, she exploded in a roar of laughter. It was the 5 October 1861: her sixteen years blossomed into eternity!
If Colomba Felice passed by a bird’s eye in the monastery, Teresa Mariume remained there for many years. She will in fact die on March 9, 1908.
She too, heard the call of the Lord, she responded to it with tenacity and courage . The nuns spared her no trials to test her vocation! Her finals vows and profession – as a choir nun –was on June 22, 1861. Sister Eletta Angelica, this was her new name, plunged with enthusiasm ,at twenty years old, a burning heart in a fragile body, in common life. Her style of attention to others and constant benevolence, the fruit of many great victories, gave her the nickname “angel of small attentions”; the sisters will write: “We felt a certain benevolence with her that made us want her company “
Sister Eletta was employed almost permanently in the porter’s lodge with her melodious voice that enchanted children. Sshe had the right word for everyone. It seems she had a particular gift of intuition to grasp the needs of her interlocutors, as well as great discernment and wisdom in giving advice. The lacerations experienced by her in her earliest childhood, the passages from one master to the other in the markets of Cairo, the violence suffered, far from hardening her heart, made her capable of infinite compassion. The large crowd that rushed to her funeral were the most eloquent testimony.
Source: http://brixiasacra.it/PDF_Brixia_Sacra/Alle%20porte%20della%20citta.pdf