Edvige Carboni, Salesian Cooperator, Beatified

Salesian Cooperator Edvige Carboni Beatified

(ANS – Pozzomaggiore, Italy – June 17) – On Saturday, May 15, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, beatified Edvige Carboni in Pozzomaggiore, Sardinia, on behalf of the Holy Father. Miss Carboni was a humble and strong woman with a “life imbued with God.” She lived a life of manual work and service, in the family and toward many needy people she met, a life filled with graces and extraordinary supernatural gifts.

Born in Pozzomaggiore in Lombardy on May 3, 1880, she wanted to become a religious but had to stay close to her sick mother. She spent a sober, recollected home life, alternating household chores with moments of prayer. On July 14, 1911, the signs of the Passion of Jesus appeared on her body. These and other mystical phenomena that were attributed to her were investigated in a canonical process of 1925, which she underwent with complete obedience. She then moved to Rome with the rest of her family in 1938, just as World War II was about to explode.

She took up residence in Rome, remaining until her death in 1952). Edvige belonged to the Salesian parish of St. Mary Help of Christians on Via Tuscolana. There she went almost every morning for Mass and Communion; there she prayed, usually in the chapel of St. Anne; most of her ecstasies and prodigious events took place there; on September 25, 1941, she became a Salesian Cooperator.

Very devoted to the Madonna, who appeared to her several times, she received many graces from her. Many were the saints of which she had apparitions, particularly Don Bosco and Dominic Savio. In her diary there are 20 apparitions of Don Bosco, often together with Mary Help of Christians or Savio. In these apparitions Don Bosco gave her suggestions, invited her to be devout toward our Lady, encouraged her in difficulties, asked her for prayers and sacrifices, showed her the great good that the Salesians did, praising the holiness of many of them, and invited her to love the Salesian Sisters.

Blessed Edvige died on Feb. 17, 1952.

Cardinal Becciu said in the homily of the beatification rite: “Blessed Edvige embodies the most beautiful virtues of the Sardinian woman of the time. And yet from her experience, data emerge that make her witness more relevant than ever.... Her simple and profound spiritual experience, marked by limitless charity, boundless humility, and incessant prayer, is still a current model, because it shows that even in a simple, ordinary life it is possible to experience a solid communion with God and an apostolate characterized by a passion for wounded and disadvantaged humanity.”