Teresa Luisa Gardi

Having been able to attend school only very briefly due to her family obligations, Teresa barely knew how to read and never learned to write. In 1800, she had a decisive encounter for her spiritual life: that of Father Carlo Francesco Zanini da Bologna, a Franciscan priest (Friar Minor Observant) who became her confessor and spiritual director for the next thirty-six years. Attracted by the ideal of Saint Francis of Assisi, she entered the Third Order of Saint Francis (today the Secular Franciscan Order) in 1801. She made her religious profession there on October 15, 1802, in the chapel of the Virgin of Graces in Imola, committing herself to living the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience intensely in her state as a laywoman. Her daily life was punctuated by domestic work, welcoming the neighborhood children to whom she taught the catechism, and assiduous prayer. Each morning, she spent more than two hours at the church to attend Mass and adore the Eucharist, and she returned there in the evening to meditate on the Way of the Cross.

Starting in the year 1804, Teresa was graced with extraordinary mystical experiences, notably ecstatic visions that occurred frequently after communion or during the Stations of the Cross. On July 25, 1804, she received the gift of the stigmata (in her hands, feet, and side). Out of humility and a desire for discretion, she begged the Lord to make these wounds invisible to the eyes of the world. Her prayer was answered: the stigmata did not manifest externally (with the exception of painful swelling in her feet and discreet bleeding in her chest), but she endured intense physical suffering from them, particularly on Fridays and during Lent. In 1817, she celebrated her spiritual marriage with Christ and pronounced a fourth vow: to always do what is most pleasing to God and contributes to His greater glory. She also went through long periods of spiritual dryness and interior temptations, living what theologians call the "dark night of the spirit." In 1816, gravely ill, she received the last sacraments before recovering suddenly. She lost her sisters Giovanna in 1817 and Domenica in 1823, remaining a model of serenity and joy despite loneliness and illness.

Teresa died of dropsy on January 1, 1837, in Imola, at the age of 67. Her reputation for holiness was so strong that the bishop of Imola at the time, Cardinal Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti (the future Pope Pius IX, now blessed), authorized her burial in the church of the Convent of the Observance (Chiesa dell'Osservanza) in Imola and had a laudatory epitaph placed on her tomb. After her death, her memory temporarily fell into oblivion, partly because the voluminous spiritual diary (about a thousand pages) written in secret by her confessor, Father Carlo Francesco Zanini, was misplaced. In 1893, a Franciscan tertiary from Imola, Maddalena Gottarelli, claimed to have seen Teresa in a dream, indicating precisely where to find the manuscript in a cupboard in Father Gioacchino da Verucchio's room. The diary was found in the indicated place and published in 1913, which allowed for the revival of her cause for beatification. The diocesan informative process took place in Imola from 1910 to 1911. After a long interruption, the cause was reactivated in 1983. The decree of validity for the diocesan inquiry was signed on April 7, 1995. On January 22, 2015, Pope Francis authorized the promulgation of the decree recognizing her heroic virtues, thus conferring upon her the title of Venerable.

The spirituality of Teresa Luisa Gardi is deeply rooted in the Franciscan charism and characterized by a constant search for secrecy and self-effacement. She embodies the "holiness of daily life," fulfilling her family and domestic duties with a face that was always joyful and radiant, despite her acute physical and spiritual sufferings. Her example shows that the highest mystical life can flourish in the simplicity of a lay and hidden life, without ostentation.