Nun (1888–1922)
St. Mary Bertilla Boscardin was raised in a poor peasant family in northern Italy. Slight and without any distinctive qualities, she attracted little regard; she was known as “the goose.” At fifteen, after deciding to enter religious life, she finally found a community—the Sisters of St. Dorothy at Vicenza—who deemed her suitable for peeling potatoes. She spent many years working in the laundry and the kitchen until finally, during an emergency, she was permitted to nurse the sick in the order’s hospital. There her true gifts were allowed to flourish.
During the war in 1915, the hospital was taken over by the military. Bertilla remained by the wounded throughout bombardment. “Here I am, Lord,” she wrote, “to do your will whatever comes, be it life, death, or terror.” After the war, when she was put in charge of a children’s ward, she wrote, “Dear Mother, I do not ask you for visions or revelations, or favors, even spiritual ones. . . . In this life I want only what you want; just to believe, without any proof or enjoyment, and to suffer joyfully without any consolation . . . to work hard for you until I die.”
By the time of her death on October 20, 1922, she was recognized by her community and by many who experienced her care as a woman of rare spiritual depth and heroic goodness. She was canonized in 1961.
“I’m a poor thing, a goose. Teach me. I want to become a saint.”
—St. Mary Bertilla Boscardin, to her first novice mistress
