Saint Who?
Saints Who Established Schools
Blessed Annunziata Cochetti
Foundress († 1882)Feast: March 23
“Become saints by doing good to the girls entrusted to you.” Annunziata Cochetti’s parents died by the time she was seven, and Annunziata was raised by her grandmother. At seventeen, she turned her former family home into a school for girls. Later she obtained a teacher’s certificate and worked at the local elementary school. Then her grandmother died, and Annunziata had to move away.
She was gone for six years, but kept in touch with friends in her home region. Some of these were members of a movement known as the Pia Opera di Santa Dorotea, which had a special interest in the needs of young people. When this group, with much difficulty, was working to establish a new school, they asked Annunziata to serve as a teacher. She came, and helped to raise the school to a high standard of excellence.
At the age of forty-two, Annunziata joined the novitiate for the Sisters of Saint Dorothy, a new religious institute attached to the Pia Opera movement. Eventually she founded her own institute, the Sisters of Saint Dorothy of Cemmo, where she promoted fervent and sacrificial love for Jesus in the Eucharist. She also organized retreats for girls, eventually retiring to the retreat house, where she died at the age of eighty-two. She was beatified in 1991.
Heavenly Father, through the intercession of
Blessed Annunziata, send our schools the able
and holy teachers they need.
