An intrepid nun

Anna Maria Rubatto was born in 1844 in Carmagnola (TO). Left alone at a very young age due to the early death of her parents, she moved to Turin as a lady-in-waiting for a noble lady. Endowed with practical faith, she immediately dedicated herself to volunteering at the main charitable works. The turning point in her life occurs by chance: while she is in Loano for a short holiday she finds a young worker on the street injured by a stone falling from a building under construction. Like the Good Samaritan, she takes care of him and pays him for the missed days of work. The owners of the house are nuns…

In short, Anna Maria began her novitiate with them. She thus continued her work of charity towards everyone, often regardless of the "conveniences" of the time. She reorganized the work of supporting the sick in their homes, leading over the years to opening around twenty foundations in Italy and Latin America, where she had been going since 1892, first in Montevideo and then in Argentina and Brazil. The future saint - she will be one in 2023 - crosses the ocean eight times in twelve years to watch over her nuns. A mission that only her death on 6 August 1904 after a brief but cruel illness would interrupt. How cruel was the massacre of her community in Alto Alegre by Indians, a massacre that cost almost three hundred deaths, including seven nuns. Her response in that case was to transfer her to one of their villages, to do missionary work there. John Paul II stated that she was born «to be in the Church and in society a humble but eloquent sign of the Gospel lived sine glossa», “to the letter”, that is, factual love, not words. Today the congregation of "Madre Rubatto" is present in Italy, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya and Malawi...


Annamaria Gobbato
NP December 2023