Maria Adeodata Pisani

Refusing marriage proposals to dedicate herself to prayer, her vocation was confirmed before the image of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Rabat. On July 16, 1828, she entered the Benedictine monastery of Saint Peter in Mdina under the name of Sister Maria Adeodata. She renounced her titles and fortune for the poor and the monastery. She held various positions there (seamstress, sacristan, nurse, portress), became mistress of novices in 1847, then abbess in 1851, striving to revive the Rule of Saint Benedict before resigning her position in 1853 for health reasons.

Of fragile health, Sister Maria Adeodata imposed rigorous penances upon herself. Her spiritual life was marked by ecstasies and levitations. She wrote a spiritual journal titled 'The mystical garden of the soul that loves Jesus and Mary'. On February 25, 1855, gravely ill, she dragged herself to the chapel for her final communion and died a few hours later from a heart attack at the age of 48.

The cause for beatification, opened in 1892-1893, was introduced in Rome in 1898 but underwent a long interruption from 1913 to 1989. Declared venerable on April 24, 2001, she was beatified by Pope John Paul II on May 9, 2001, in Floriana (Malta). The miracle accepted was the extraordinary healing in 1897 of Mother Maria Giuseppina Damiani, abbess of the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco.

Her spirituality rests on the Benedictine balance between contemplation and charity. Her work 'The mystical garden of the soul that loves Jesus and Mary' bears witness to her profound union with Christ. She is venerated as the patroness of cloistered contemplatives, children from broken homes, and is invoked against cancer. Her relics rest at the Monastery of Saint Peter in Mdina.