Elena Aiello

Elena Emilia Aiello was born on 10 April 1895 at Montalto Uffugo in the province of Cosenza, Calabria, into an exemplary Christian family, the third of eight children of the tailor Pasquale Aiello and Teresina Paglilla. Baptized soon after birth and raised in lively faith, she lost her mother in 1905 and grew early in prayer, penance, and desire for religious life. During a long illness she consecrated herself to the Lord by the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. After the First World War and the Spanish flu, she entered the Sisters of Charity of the Most Precious Blood at Nocera dei Pagani in August 1920.

A poorly treated shoulder condition, followed by further physical damage and the onset of grave illness including stomach cancer, forced her departure from the convent. Returning home, she invoked Saint Rita of Cascia and obtained healing; tradition holds that Saint Rita appeared to her in a dream. From November 1921 mystical phenomena accompanied her until death. Blood sweat and the stigmata appeared especially on the Fridays of Lent and on Good Friday. On one Good Friday the Lord appeared and placed the crown of thorns upon her head, and blood flowed for hours. She also received visions of the Blessed Virgin and of saints such as Francis of Paola and Thérèse of the Child Jesus.

Shaped by participation in Christ's Passion, on 17 January 1928 she began, with her first companion Luigina (Luigia) Mazza, a work of service to the most abandoned, especially orphaned and neglected little girls. Entrusting her first steps to Saint Francis of Paola, patron of Calabria, and to Saint Thérèse, she founded the Congregation of the Minim Sisters of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The institute gradually took shape and received pontifical approval (attested as 2 January 1948 / July 1949). Participation in the sufferings of Christ and love for the least, sustained by continual prayer and fervent devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, became the twin pillars of foundress and congregation. The community spread from Calabria throughout Italy and into poor regions of Latin America among emigrants.

During the Jubilee of 1950 she met Pope Pius XII and asked whether her work was according to the heart of the Church; the Holy Father answered that her work would not end because it was founded on Providence. She loved the Pope and the Church deeply and often told her sisters that their duty was to "sentire cum Ecclesia"—to think and feel with the Church. In 1940, after an interior command of the Lord, she wrote to Benito Mussolini warning him not to ally with Hitler, lest defeat and divine punishment fall upon the Italian people; the letter went unanswered. An eminently Eucharistic soul, she lived the maxim she repeated almost as a litany: there is no love without suffering.

Sister Elena Aiello died in Rome at dawn on 19 June 1961, after receiving the last sacraments, having spent her life in holy service of the poor and the least. In life and in death the people called her the "holy nun." Her fame of holiness led to the opening of the cause; she was declared Venerable by Saint John Paul II on 22 January 1991. A scientifically inexplicable healing of a young woman from severe cranial trauma and related injuries was recognized as a miracle, and she was beatified at Cosenza on 14 September 2011, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

May Blessed Elena Aiello obtain for us a heart that loves the Crucified and serves the abandoned, and help us practice today the virtue of uniting charity with patient suffering.