Cecilia Eusepi

At the age of ten, Cecilia read the autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, which sparked in her a deep desire for holiness and imitation of the "little way." Attracted by religious life and eager to become a missionary, she joined the Secular Third Order of the Servants of Mary (the Mantellates) on November 1, 1922, taking the name Maria Angela. Despite her family's initial reluctance due to her young age, she obtained a dispensation from her bishop, Msgr. Luigi Maria Olivares, to enter the novitiate of the nuns of the Third Order of the Servants of Mary in Pistoia in November 1923, when she was only thirteen and a half years old. She continued her secondary studies there for three years. However, in the summer of 1926, she contracted pulmonary tuberculosis. As her health declined rapidly, she was forced to leave the convent and return to the family farm of "La Massa" in Nepi in October 1926. It was there that she spent the last two years of her life, bedridden by illness.

During her long agony in Nepi, Cecilia met Father Gabriele Maria Roschini, a young Servite priest teaching at the priory of Nepi, who became her spiritual director. Faced with the young girl's spiritual depth, Father Roschini asked her to write her diary and autobiography. Cecilia complied out of obedience and titled her work Storia di un Pagliaccio ("History of a Clown"), humorously considering herself a "little clown of the Child Jesus," weak and useless, but entirely abandoned into the hands of God. Despite her extreme physical suffering, she offered her life and her pains for the salvation of souls, the priests, and the seminarians who often came to visit her to seek her advice and prayers. She passed away holily on October 1, 1928, at the age of 18, after having predicted the date of her death following a dream involving Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Her remains were transferred on March 16, 1944, to the church of San Tolomeo ai Servi in Nepi.

The cause for the beatification of Cecilia Eusepi began with a diocesan informative process opened in 1939. Her writings were examined and declared in conformity with Catholic doctrine in 1946. On June 1, 1987, Pope John Paul II signed the decree recognizing the heroic nature of her virtues, declaring her venerable. The miracle necessary for her beatification was officially approved by Pope Benedict XVI on July 1, 2010. This miracle concerns the scientifically inexplicable survival of Tommaso Ricci, which occurred on August 4, 1959, in Monte Romano. While he was resting in the shade of a pile of wheat, he was crushed by a Chevrolet truck weighing over 1,000 kg driven by Adriano De Guidi (the husband of a great-niece of Cecilia). The latter immediately invoked the intercession of Cecilia Eusepi. Transported to the hospital in a condition deemed desperate, Tommaso Ricci left shortly after unharmed, without any internal lesions. The beatification ceremony was celebrated on June 17, 2012, on the Piazza della Bottata in Nepi, presided over by Cardinal Angelo Amato on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI.

The spirituality of Cecilia Eusepi follows directly in the wake of the "little way" of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, characterized by humility, trusting abandonment, and absolute love for Christ. She wrote in particular: "I will reach Jesus by a little path, brief, very brief, traced for me by little Thérèse. Here it is: Humility, Abandonment, Love". Her spiritual life was also deeply Eucharistic and Marian, marked by an intense devotion to the Virgin of Sorrows (Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows), specific to the tradition of the Order of the Servants of Mary. She considered her sufferings not as a punishment, but as an opportunity to unite herself intimately with the Passion of Christ, stating: "It is beautiful to give oneself to Jesus, who gave himself entirely for us". Her diary, Storia di un Pagliaccio, remains a poignant testimony of Christian joy lived in the heart of illness.