Bruna Pellesi

After her religious profession, Sister Maria Rosa was sent to Sassuolo to teach in a primary school. She spent the difficult years of the Second World War (1942-1945) there, giving herself without reserve to the education of children. Faced with the concerns of her sisters regarding her exhausting pace of work, she simply replied that, being accustomed to farm work, she did not fear fatigue. In May 1945, she was transferred to Ferrara to teach in a parish school and opened a nursery school there in July. However, her active apostolate was abruptly interrupted. On September 5, 1945, she was hospitalized due to severe pulmonary tuberculosis. This was the beginning of a long ordeal of 27 years of illness. She first spent three years at the "Pineta" sanatorium in Gaiato (Modena), then, from December 1948, she was transferred to the Pizzardi sanatorium (now Bellaria Hospital) in Bologna, where she would remain hospitalized for 24 years. No longer able to teach, Sister Maria Rosa transformed her hospital room into a true place of apostolate and spiritual influence. She welcomed other patients there, comforted them, and guided them. She also maintained a monumental correspondence, writing more than 2,000 letters to priests, religious, and laypeople to support them in their faith. She offered her intense physical suffering for the salvation of souls, the sanctification of priests, and the life of the Church.

Sister Maria Rosa's spiritual journey was marked by an increasingly intimate union with the suffering Christ. On March 25, 1955, the feast of the Annunciation, she suffered a violent pulmonary hemorrhage that brought her to the gates of death. This event strengthened her desire to abandon herself totally to God. On August 5 of the same year, she made a solemn vow of loving, joyful, and unconditional abandonment to the divine will. Despite the inexorable progression of tuberculosis, she maintained a serene face and a constant smile, becoming a luminous witness of Christian joy in the midst of pain. In November 1972, as her health had irremediably deteriorated, she was authorized to return to the convent of Sassuolo. It was there that she passed away peacefully on December 1, 1972, at the age of 55, reduced by illness to an extreme weight of 20 kg (43 pounds), but inhabited by a deep peace. Her spiritual writings, collected after her death, represent 16 volumes of more than 2,100 pages.

The cause for the beatification of Sister Maria Rosa of Jesus officially began on March 6, 1981, with the granting of the nihil obstat from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The diocesan inquiry took place from 1982 to 1987. On July 1, 2000, Pope John Paul II signed the decree recognizing the heroic nature of her virtues, thus proclaiming her Venerable. The miracle accepted for her beatification concerns the scientifically inexplicable healing of a religious sister from her own congregation. In October 1988, this fellow sister, the victim of a serious accident, had fallen into a deep coma accompanied by major medical complications. After the community invoked the intercession of Sister Maria Rosa by placing a holy card under her pillow, the patient recovered suddenly and completely. This miracle was officially approved by Pope Benedict XVI on June 28, 2006. The beatification ceremony was celebrated on April 29, 2007, in the Cathedral of Rimini, presided over by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and papal legate.

The spirituality of Blessed Maria Rosa of Jesus rests on the joyful offering of suffering and total abandonment to Providence. She knew how to transform the "forced enclosure" of her hospital room into a space of spiritual freedom and apostolic fruitfulness. Nicknamed the "sister of the world in suffering, joy, and hope," she leaves a powerful example of how faith can transfigure human pain into an act of pure love. Her spiritual legacy remains very much alive, particularly in Emilia-Romagna. In December 2024, the room in the Tinozzi pavilion of the Bellaria Hospital in Bologna, where she lived and suffered for 24 years, was officially transformed and inaugurated as a chapel dedicated to her memory, offering a place of reflection for patients and healthcare staff. Her liturgical feast is set for December 1st, the day of her birth into Heaven.