Gemma Galgani

Gemma Umberta Maria Galgani was born on 12 March 1878 at Borgo Nuovo di Camigliano, in the comune of Capannori near Lucca, Tuscany. She was the fifth of eight children and the first daughter of Enrico Galgani, a prosperous pharmacist, and Aurelia Landi. Soon after her birth the family moved to Lucca so the children might have better schooling. From her earliest years suffering marked her path: her mother contracted tuberculosis when Gemma was still small, and on 17 September 1886 Aurelia died. Gemma was only seven or eight. Other family deaths followed—among them her brother Carlo, her sister Giulia, and later her beloved brother Gino, a seminarian who died of the same disease in 1894 while preparing for the priesthood.

Confirmed on 26 May 1885 by Archbishop Nicola Ghilardi in the church of San Michele in Foro, Gemma was educated by the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, the congregation founded by Saint Elena Guerra. She excelled in French, arithmetic, and music. On 17 June 1887, the feast of the Sacred Heart, she received her First Holy Communion and later recalled that Jesus then planted in her the deep desire to become a religious. Her ordinary confessor from childhood was Giovanni Volpi, later Bishop of Arezzo. Even as a girl she showed tender love for the poor of Lucca, emptying her father's house of goods for them and caring little for dress or appearance.

In 1897 her father Enrico died of throat cancer. Orphaned and left in poverty, Gemma shared with her aunt Carolina the care of her younger siblings. She declined two proposals of marriage. Serious illness then struck her: osteitis of the lumbar vertebrae, mastoid otitis, and loss of the use of her legs left her bedridden and semi-paralyzed for months. In that trial she read the life of Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows and was deeply moved. She invoked Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque; after a novena she was cured in 1899, attributing her recovery to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the intercession of those saints.

Though she longed to enter a cloistered convent, circumstances never allowed it. This did not hinder her from plunging into contemplation of Jesus Crucified. On 8 June 1899—the Octave of Corpus Christi and the vigil of the feast of the Sacred Heart—she received the stigmata. The wounds returned periodically from Thursday evening until three o'clock on Friday afternoon, and for a time almost daily. Some doubted their authenticity; Father Germano Ruoppolo, Passionist postulator and student of mysticism, defended her and became her spiritual director from about September 1900. She also experienced colloquies with Jesus, Mary, her guardian angel, and Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, recorded in her letters, Diary, and Autobiography. She was often found in ecstasy; tradition holds that she was once raised from the floor while embracing a crucifix and kissing the wound in Christ's side. She resisted fierce assaults of the devil and offered her sufferings as expiation.

Welcomed into the Giannini household in Lucca, she found a second family; Cecilia Giannini became like a foster mother to her. In May 1902 symptoms of tuberculosis were diagnosed. She had to move to a nearby apartment. Her final decline was long and painful, accompanied by mystical graces. Nursing sisters who attended her said they had never seen anything like it. At the beginning of Holy Week 1903 her condition worsened sharply. On Good Friday she suffered intensely; on Holy Saturday, 11 April 1903, she died in a small room opposite the Giannini house, after the bells had already announced the Resurrection of Christ. She was twenty-five years old.

Thirty years later Pius XI beatified her (14 May 1933). Pius XII canonized her on 2 May 1940 and called her a "star of his pontificate." Her relics rest at the Sanctuary of Saint Gemma by the Passionist monastery in Lucca; her heart was later enshrined in Madrid. The Passionists especially honor her as one who, though never clothed in their habit, lived their spirit of the Passion.

May Saint Gemma Galgani obtain for us a share in her love of the Crucified and the courage to offer our daily sufferings with Him.