Saint Who?
Saints Who Were Missionaries
Blessed Maria Carola Cecchin
Religious († 1925) Feast: November 13
Born in northern Italy, Fiorina tried to enter a religious order when she was eighteen years old. That order turned her down because of her poor health, but the Cottolengo Missionary Sisters accepted her. She took the name Maria Carola and served her order in Italy for several years.
She was twenty-eight years old when she was sent to serve in Kenya, along with four other Cottolengo sisters and two sisters from the Consolata Missionaries. Together, the sisters taught children and provided basic medical care to the people who lived nearby. The sisters worked hard to adapt to the culture, language, and climate of Kenya. Maria Carola was assigned to three mission stations over the twenty years she spent there, eventually becoming the mother superior. She was so kind and loving that the students thought of her as a mother, and she worked to make each mission station feel like a home by planting a vegetable garden.
Although the two orders of sisters had initially worked well together, they began to differ over their approaches to evangelization. As the split grew, the pope himself intervened and ordered the Cottolengo sisters to return to Italy. Maria Carola, who had developed a severe digestive condition, died during the return journey and was buried at sea.
Loving Savior, give us hearts full of compassion
for our neighbors in need.
