Don Bosco's "Marietina" Becomes Uruguay's First Saint

Don Bosco’s “Marietina” Becomes Uruguay’s First Saint!

(ANS – Montevideo – May 17, 2022) – On Sunday, May 15, in a packed St. Peter’s Square, ten new saints were proclaimed. Among them was Maria Francesca di Gesù Rubatto, foundress of the Capuchin Sisters of Mother Rubatto, Uruguay’s first canonized saint. Don Bosco was instrumental in her life and discernment that led her to choose religious life. In addition, he prophesied several aspects of her mission.

It was her ability to go to a personal encounter in a simple and affable way, to lead people to God, that brought to the altars this woman of courageous choices. She adopted Uruguay as her mission land and the homeland where she chose to die. Her life reveals a strong and decisive relationship with Don Bosco.

Anna Maria (Sister Francesca’s name before she became a nun) arrived in Turin in 1862 after losing almost all of her family. She settled in the home of her older sister, who was married, and then went to work for a wealthy countess. It was the time when Don Bosco was working with his oratories, and she decided to work with him with that discretion, prudence, kindness, and tenderness that always characterized her.

Anna Maria had no intention of becoming a nun, even tho she had consecrated herself to God when she lived in Carmagnola (her hometown). In Turin, however, along with the vulnerable young people welcomed in the oratories, she discovered the purpose of her life and, when she was invited to join the religious institute that was being formed, she consulted Don Bosco. And he said to her, “Look, Marietina (that’s what he called her), it’s God’s will that you go. Don’t worry, because your community will last a long time. You will never lack anything because my brothers – the Salesians – will always be close to you, and I tell you that you will die in a foreign land.”

These prophecies of Don Bosco to his affectionate Marietina came true. Indeed, in her mission, she incorporated many characteristics of the Preventive System, such as the desire to care for abandoned young people in order to educate them to give dignity to their lives.

To her sisters, settled in the house where her remains rest today, in Belvedere, she indicated that their mission was to care for and nurture the young hearts that God entrusted to them so that they would be “the honor of the Church and their country.” This phrase is almost a replica of Don Bosco’s famous expression of forming “good Christians and upright citizens.”