Lucia Cavallo

In 1933, Lucia learned of a letter from Don Luigi Orione (Saint Luigi Orione) inviting young people to consecrate themselves to God. On November 3, 1933, at the age of 20, she left her family to enter the congregation of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity (Piccole Suore Missionarie della Carità) in Tortona. She began her formation in Genoa-Marassi, at the Piccolo Cottolengo, where she trained as a nurse for the physically and mentally ill. She received the religious habit and the name Sister Maria Plautilla on Christmas night, December 24, 1935, in Tortona. After her novitiate, she pronounced her first vows on December 7, 1937, in the hands of the founder, Don Orione. Sister Maria Plautilla was then assigned to the Paverano Institute in Genoa, the heart of the congregation's assistance complex, which at the time housed more than 500 patients suffering from physical or mental disabilities, as well as orphans. She spent the rest of her life there, dedicating herself day and night to the most severely ill patients. She distinguished herself by her gentleness, her heroic patience, and her constant joy, despite material difficulties, the bombings of the Second World War, and the lack of understanding from certain superiors.

The health of Sister Maria Plautilla, already fragile, deteriorated severely under the weight of her incessant work. In the autumn of 1945, she suffered her first heart attack. At the end of 1946, she performed a heroic act of charity: she saved in extremis a psychiatric patient who had ventured onto the outer ledge of a terrace and was at risk of a fatal fall. This intense physical effort definitively exhausted her cardiac strength. Forced to reduce her activities, she spent the last months of her life in suffering and prayer. On August 14, 1947, she received the anointing of the sick and, the following day, August 15, she was authorized to pronounce her perpetual vows on her hospital bed. She passed away on October 5, 1947, in Genoa, at the age of 33, while contemplating her crucifix.

The reputation for holiness of Sister Maria Plautilla spread rapidly after her death, both among her fellow sisters and among the faithful and the families of the sick. The diocesan informative process for her beatification opened in Genoa on October 2, 1986, and closed on October 6, 1989. After the examination of her cause by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Pope Benedict XVI authorized, on July 1, 2010, the promulgation of the decree recognizing the heroic nature of her virtues, thus conferring upon her the title of Venerable.

Sister Maria Plautilla fully embodied the charism of Saint Luigi Orione, to the point of being sometimes described as "Don Orione in a sister's habit." Her spirituality is based on what the founder called the "spirituality of the rag" (spiritualità dello straccio): to consider oneself a humble instrument, a rag in the hands of God, destined to wipe away the tears and misery of the poorest, only to be cast into oblivion afterward. She lived her consecration in a spirit of total offering and perfect joy, finding Christ in the faces of the mentally ill and the excluded. Her legacy remains alive within the congregation of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity and the Paverano Institute in Genoa, where a department today bears her name.