Early life and entry into religious life
Giuseppina De Micheli was born in Milan on 11 September 1890 to Cesare De Micheli and Luigina Radice, one of several children in a devout household. Baptized the same day in the parish church of San Pietro in Sala, she lost her father to heart disease when she was only eighteen months old. Her mother kept the family business while rising early for Mass and praying the Rosary with the children each evening; the eldest sister Angelina helped form the younger ones in Eucharistic devotion, silence, and sacrifice. Frail in body yet strong in character, Giuseppina received First Communion on 3 May 1898 and Confirmation later that June.
On Good Friday 1902, while venerating the Cross, the eleven-year-old girl heard interiorly the voice of Jesus asking whether no one would give His Face a kiss of love to make reparation for the kiss of Judas. From that moment a lifelong devotion to the Holy Face took root. Sensing a call to consecrated life, she entered the Congregation of the Daughters of the Immaculate Conception of Buenos Aires on 15 October 1913 and received the name Sister Maria Pierina. She made her first simple profession in Argentina on 23 May 1915, having been sent there at the beginning of her religious life. There she perfected manual skills, studied violin and piano, taught mathematics and religion despite the difficulty of Spanish and the climate that often caused her to faint, and offered every trial for poor souls and for priests. She pronounced perpetual vows on 11 July 1921 and returned to Italy that November for reasons of health and the needs of the Congregation.
Years in Buenos Aires and return to Milan
In Italy she was successively superior of the house in Milan, superior of the newly opened house in Rome, and regional superior. Her government was marked by rectitude, firmness, and charity; she advanced both the spiritual and cultural formation of the sisters and the schools entrusted to them. All the while she lived interiorly as a victim of reparation, consoling the Sacred Face and Heart of Jesus for the offenses against His merciful love, especially the agony of Gethsemane. Only her confessors and spiritual director knew of the special graces she received; she practiced the counsel of St. John of the Cross never to reveal the secrets of the King.
Visions and the Holy Face Medal
On the first Friday of Lent 1936 she reported a vision of Christ who said He willed that His Face, reflecting the intimate pains of His spirit and the suffering and love of His Heart, be more honored, for whoever meditates upon it consoles Him. Further reported apparitions of Jesus and Mary directed her to strike a medal bearing the Holy Face taken from the Shroud of Turin. After obtaining the necessary permissions in Rome and Milan, she arranged for the medal's manufacture by 1940. Its obverse showed the Face surrounded by the words of (Psalm 66:2); its reverse bore a radiant Host with the monogram IHS and the plea of the disciples of Emmaus, "Stay with us, Lord." The first medal was offered to Pope Pius XII, who approved the devotion; later the same pontiff established the Feast of the Holy Face on Shrove Tuesday.
Final years and death
In 1941 she wrote in her diary of a deep longing to live always united to Jesus and to love Him intensely, so that her death might be only a transport of love with her Spouse. After a brief illness she died a holy death at Centonara d'Artò, Novara, on 26 July 1945; the fragrance of her holiness spread at once among the people of God. Her remains were later transferred to the Holy Spirit Institute in Rome. A miracle of healing attributed to her intercession through the Holy Face Medal was recognized for her beatification, celebrated on 30 May 2010 at the Basilica of Saint Mary Major.
May Blessed Maria Pierina obtain for us a spirit of reparation, that we may console the Holy Face of Jesus today by faithful love and humble silence.
