Maria Francesca Rubatto

The congregation founded by Anna Maria Rubatto received the name Terziarie Cappuccine di Loano. Approved by the Holy See on February 28, 1910, it was renamed in 1973 as Suore Cappuccine di Madre Rubatto. Its dual mission—care of the sick in hospitals and instruction of the young—was rooted in the Franciscan tradition and in the spirituality of total obedience to Divine Providence. In a few years, the congregation extended to several houses in Liguria and Piedmont. In 1892, seven years after the foundation, Mother Maria Francesca crossed the Atlantic for the first time and established herself in Montevideo, Uruguay. She thus responded to an invitation from the local archdiocese, which was eager to develop educational and charitable works. That same year, the congregation established itself in Argentina. Over the years, Mother Rubatto crossed the Atlantic at least seven times to visit her communities, found new ones, and support the sisters in their apostolate. She notably established a college in Montevideo in 1895. At her death in 1904, the congregation counted eighteen houses spread between Italy, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Today, the Capuchin Sisters of Mother Rubatto are present in Italy, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, and Malawi, continuing in the spirit of their founder the service of the most destitute through teaching and medical assistance.

The spiritual figure of Maria Francesca Rubatto is characterized by a total availability to Providence, which her contemporaries and biographers describe as the key to her vocation. Having not sought a religious life through ambition or personal planning, she discerned through encounters and circumstances—the loss of her parents, life in the service of a noblewoman, the injury of a worker—the successive calls of God. Her intimate relationship with Saint John Bosco, whose collaborator she was for works in Turin, contributed to refining her sense of concrete evangelical service. She nourished her inner life with a sober Franciscan devotion, marked by lived poverty and humility. Superior of her congregation for nearly twenty years, she exercised authority in a spirit of maternal service, going herself to meet the most distant communities across the Atlantic. Her choice to be buried among the poor in Montevideo, in accordance with her wish expressed before her death, was the final visible sign of this coherence between inner life and external commitment. Her reputation for holiness was recognized shortly after her death, leading to the opening of her cause in 1965 under Pope Paul VI. In 1988, Pope John Paul II proclaimed her venerable, attesting that her heroic virtues had been established with certainty.

The cause for the canonization of Maria Francesca Rubatto was officially opened on April 13, 1965, under the pontificate of Paul VI. On September 1, 1988, John Paul II signed the decree recognizing her heroic virtues and proclaimed her Venerable. A first miracle—the unexplained healing, in 1939, of a child, Giovanni Battista Bottino, suffering from septic shock following an infection after a tonsillectomy—was recognized as medically inexplicable on October 8, 1992, and then approved on April 2, 1993, paving the way for beatification. On October 10, 1993, in Saint Peter's Square in Rome, Pope John Paul II proclaimed her Blessed, designating her as the first Blessed of Uruguay. A second miracle was investigated and ratified: it concerned the unexplained healing, on March 24, 2000, in Colonia (Uruguay), of a young man who was a victim of severe head trauma with severe subarachnoid hemorrhage, deep coma, and diffuse axonal injury, following prayers addressed to the Blessed by his family. On February 21, 2020, Pope Francis approved this miracle during an audience granted to Cardinal Angelo Becciu, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. On May 15, 2022, Pope Francis proceeded with the canonization of Maria Francesca Rubatto in Saint Peter's Square. Her liturgical feast is set for August 6, the anniversary of her death.

The canonization of Maria Francesca Rubatto on May 15, 2022, took on a particular significance for the Church in Uruguay: it was welcomed as the first canonization formally linked to the Uruguayan territory, marking the pontifical recognition of a holiness rooted in this country for over a century. Her remains rest in the sanctuary consecrated in her honor in the Belvedere neighborhood of Montevideo, near the chapel of Sant'Antonio di Padova, a place of pilgrimage for Uruguayan and Italian faithful. In Italy, the city of Loano, the cradle of the congregation, also preserves the memory of the foundress. On a spiritual level, the legacy of Maria Francesca Rubatto is embodied in concrete charity—care for the sick, education of the youth, service to migrants and marginalized populations—which the Capuchin Sisters of Mother Rubatto continue to implement in their houses in Italy, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, and Malawi. She is invoked as a model of availability to Providence and unconditional evangelical service. Her figure is particularly celebrated in the French-speaking and Italian-speaking communities of South America, where her memory remains alive.