Maria Pia Gullini

Maria Pia Gullini (born August 16, 1892 in Verona , † April 29, 1959 in Rome ) was an Italian Trappist and abbess.

Life

Origin and upbringing

Maria Elena Gullini came from an upper class family. The father Arrigo Gullini (1863-1939) was an engineer and made a career as a high civil servant. The pious mother, Celsa Rossi (1863–1942), like her husband, came from Bazzano near Bologna . Maria was the oldest child in the family. At the age of 5 she saw the death of a two-year-old brother. She had two other brothers. Maria grew up in Verona and from 1900 in Venice , where she attended the school of the Sacré Coeur sisters in the Palazzo Savorgnan and was brought up in French together with French noble daughters.

The surprising monastery wish

The young woman, who is considered beautiful, elegant, intelligent, musically and artistically gifted, with an exuberant temperament, appeared as the companion of her father at public events. In 1912 the family moved to Rome. When her parents recommended a lawyer son among the numerous admirers there, who asked for her hand through the local priest, she responded to her father's horror with the wish to go to the monastery. The parents reached a waiting period. Mary worked as a catechist for poor children in the catechism work of the Brazilian Evangelina Caymari.

Via Grottaferrata to Laval

When Italy entered the war in 1915, Maria trained as a nurse, but was prevented from working at the front by her parents. In 1916 she wished to join the Little Sisters of Assumptio , but was referred to the Trappist General Procurator Norbert Sauvage (1876–1923), who invited her to an eight-day retreat in the Trappist monastery of Grottaferrata and then in the French Trappist abbey of La Coudre in Laval where she arrived on June 28, 1917 and was dressed as a novice on September 29. She took the religious name Pia (after Pius X , whom she knew personally from Venice). She made the temporary profession on July 16, 1919 and the perpetual profession on June 16, 1922. From 1924 to 1926 she was conversational master of 40 conversations with great success .

Abbess in Grottaferrata. Twice abdication

In 1926 she returned to Grottaferrata at the behest of the superiors, where on December 27, 1927, in the presence of Abbot General Jean-Baptiste Ollitrault de Kéryvallan, she vowed the Stabilitas loci . The chapter, which she had unanimously rejected in a first vote, she accepted just as unanimously in a second vote called for by the immediate superior. The monastery was spiritually in bad shape. The wish of the superiors of the order to appoint Sister Pia as abbess failed in the election on November 7, 1929, when the choir sisters who had sole voting rights, i.e. the old guard, mostly spoke out in favor of the incumbent. Abbess Agnes Scandelli made Pia prioress in July 1931. When the long-ill abbess was finally unable to exercise her office, Cardinal Michele Lega appointed Sister Pia by rescript on December 30, 1931 . Abbess Pia succeeded in consolidating the monastery by appointing Sister Cécile Decosse (who had already headed the Belval monastery as prioress) as prioress and Sister Thekla Fontana from the Trappist Abbey of Chimay as novice master. In addition, she was advised by letter from the abbess of La Coudre. The long-time abbess Agnes died on November 10, 1932. On February 6, 1935, Pia was confirmed almost unanimously as abbess for three years, including on February 13, 1938 (with four out of 15 votes for Sister Thekla). Because of criticism from within her own ranks and differences with the immediate superior Ubald Corsi, abbot of the Trappist Abbey of Frattocchie , she resigned from her position on December 4, 1940 and was appointed novice master (and subprioress) by the abbess Thekla, who was elected that same month. After the monastery suffered badly from the war in 1944, she was re-elected abbess for three years on December 17, 1946, re-elected on December 21, 1949, but resigned for a second time on April 16, 1951 and left Grottaferrata.

Commitment to ecumenism. Maria Gabriella Sagheddu

In the twenty years from 1931 to 1951 in which she shaped the monastery, two concerns were in the foreground for her, ecumenism and the legacy of Blessed Maria Gabriella Sagheddu . In 1933, a letter contact began between her and Henriette Ferrary from Lyon (reinforced by a visit to the monastery in 1936), which introduced her to the ecumenical movement of Paul Couturier from Lyon . Their commitment to ecumenism, which was not without controversy among the religious superiors, led to the fact that from 1937 three nuns offered themselves as victims for the cause of the unity of the church and died in a short time, an already old sister, mother Immaculata, and two young ones Sardinian women, Michela Dui (joined 1933, died July 23, 1939) and especially Maria Gabriella Sagheddu (joined 1935, died April 23, 1939). The latter wrote the Sardinian writer Maria Giovanna Dore (who joined on June 30, 1939) at the behest of the abbess a biography that was published in May 1940 with an animated preface by Igino Giordani (1894–1980), co-founder of the Focolare Movement , and became a great book success and ultimately led to her beatification in 1983. Grottaferrata became a meeting point for numerous admirers of Maria Gabriella Sagheddu, as well as ecumenically committed people from all over the world (including Roger Schutz or Benedict Ley, 1896–1964, from the Benedictine community of Nashdom in England), whom Abbess Pia Gullini was an intensive interlocutor . The unrest that arose in the monastery was the basis for the first resignation in 1940. There were further reasons for the final resignation in 1951, the most important of which was obviously the rift between the high ideals of a less diplomatic abbess and some overstrained choir sisters to whom the religious superiors lent their ears.

Exile in Switzerland and death in Rome

In 1951 Sister Pia was summoned to the La Fille-Dieu Abbey north of Lausanne (with a ban on writing letters to Grottaferrata). There she ran the biography of Maria Gabriella Sagheddu in French by Gaston Zananiri (1904-1996), which appeared in 1955 in Tournai . At the beginning of 1959, the convent , which was moved from Grottaferrata to Vitorchiano in 1957 , expressed the wish to re-elect Pia Gullini as abbess. Sister Pia, who was already terminally ill, arrived in Rome on February 23 and had to be hospitalized there. She could not be cured of her cancer, spent the last 14 days in the monastery of the Bethlehemitinnen and died there on April 29, 1959. She was the first to be buried in the cemetery of the new monastery Vitorchiano.

Appreciation

Abbess Armanda Borrone called her a saint in 1966. Her student Ennio Francia (1904–1995) edited part of her correspondence and notes in 1971 (English translation published in 2019). Only recently did two extensive biographies appear in Italian, one of which was also translated into French.

Works

• Ennio Francia (Ed.): Lettere dalla trappa . Messa degli artisti, Rome 1971.
• Gabriella Sagheddu: The Letters of Blessed Maria Gabriella with the Notebooks of Mother Pia Gullini . Liturgical Press, Collegeville 2019.

literature

• Mariella Carpinello: Monachesimo femminile e profezia. L'azione ecumenica di Madre Maria Pia Gullini . Cantagalli, Siena 2015.
• Maria Augusta Tescari: Madre Pia Gullini. Una figura profetica del monachesimo italiano del XX secolo . Cantagalli, Siena 2016.
  • (French) Mère Pia Gullini. Une figure prophétique du monachisme Italy du XXe siècle . Cerf, Paris 2019.

Web links

• Entry in the Cistercian dictionary
• Short biography on the website of Vitorchiano Monastery , Italian
• Short biography , French
• Short biography , English
• Biographical information on the website of the Community of the Resurrection , English

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mère Pia Gullini. Une figure prophétique du monachisme Italy du XXe siècle. Cerf, Paris 2019, p. 313.