Vatican City, May 23, 2010 / 09:18 am
The Holy Father thanked God for Blessed Teresa Manganiello, a "luminous witness to the Gospel," after the Regina Coeli prayer on Sunday. The recently beatified saint is remembered for her humility and penitential spirit.
Blessed Manganiello was beatified in a ceremony presided over by Archbishop Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, in Benevento, Italy on Saturday with 10,000 people on hand for the celebration.
She was the 11th child of a farming family in the southern Italian city of Montefusco. The Holy Father remembered the simple and humble life she spent between working in the home and praying at the local Church of St. Egidio, where she became a lay member of the Franciscans' Third Order.
In an article published in L'Osservatore Romano this week, the postulator for her cause, Luigi Porsi, spoke of her deeply spiritual life which was "imbued above all with a poor spirit" and was shared between these two "poles of attraction," Church and home.