In the community founded by the young Mary Mazzarello, Saint John Bosco discerned the beginning of the feminine branch that the Virgin Mary had asked him for so many years ago in a dream.
Newsroom (21/05/2025 15:55, Gaudium Press) Born in Mornese, an alpine village in Alto Monferrato, on May 9, 1837, Maria belonged to a poor family and had a village childhood like that of her founder.
She prayed a lot. She was the first student in catechism. She made her First Holy Communion at the age of 10, and from then on, she took communion every day, which was unusual in those days. She got up before dawn and hurried to church, sometimes walking in the snow. “Without Jesus, I wouldn’t know how to live,” she said.
An epidemic changed her life
When she was 23 years old, Providence proved her dedication. An epidemic of black typhus ravaged the village of Mornese. Everyone fled the infected families. One of these was that of her uncle Orestes Mazzarello: he, his wife and their children, all victims of the terrible plague, had no one to help them.
Maria’s spiritual director, Father Domenico Pasquale Pestarino, asked her to do this act of charity. She was afraid, but at the same time, something in her soul called her to sacrifice herself for others in order to be more united with the Lord.
She left for her uncle’s house and, within a week, ordered to return home. Even the most seriously ill began to recover. Mary, however, contracted the disease and her condition worsened to the point where she refused to take medicine. She just hoped that God would come and take her to Paradise.
She was wrong! Even without the help of medication, she recovered her health and got up ready to resume her former life. However, the illness had sapped her strength. She couldn’t work in the fields as before. She had to find another occupation. What would she do?
The first girls appear
With this restlessness in her soul, one day she was walking along the hill of Borgo Alto – where there was no building at the time – when she saw a large building in front of her with lots of little girls playing and running around in a courtyard. Startled, she rubbed her eyes and clearly heard the words: “Take care of these girls”.
Maria told Father Pestarino what had happened. He told her that it was pure imagination and recommended that she forget the vision and not tell anyone about it. She obeyed, but something remained inside her.
Maria told her friend Petronila of her intention to set up a sewing workshop to teach poor girls this craft. The mysterious words heard on the hill of Borgo Alto led her to look for the children she would have to “look after”.
She explained to Petronilla that, as well as teaching them the trade, she wanted to talk to them about God. She invited Petronilla to join her in this noble endeavor.
Petronila accepted the invitation and the two settled into a small room where ten girls went every day to learn dressmaking. They were the poorest. The two young women guided their clumsy little hands through the fabrics and machines, while at the same time guiding their childish hearts towards God.
A small community was born
The beginning was not easy. As well as facing difficulties with their families, they had to endure the irony of the villagers. They were forced to move several times. They went through the same hardships that their founder, still unknown to them, had gone through in Turin.
One night in the winter of 1863, two little girls with eyes wide with fright knocked on the Mazzarello’s door. They were motherless, and their father, a peddler, had asked the charitable girls to take them in while he traveled. Maria and Petronila got a bed and some cornmeal to make polenta from the neighbors and gave them lodging.
The news spread quickly. Help arrived from everywhere: firewood, blankets, flour and cornmeal. Before spring, there were already seven girls for whom the two young women were playing mother. Father Pestarino encouraged them, saying that it was God who had sent them these needy little creatures.
Soon two other girls from the Pious Union of the Daughters of Mary offered to help with the housework. Pestarino agreed and they formed a small community: the “Four Daughters”, as they were called in the village.
They did for them what Don Bosco did for the boys. Without them knowing it, a sort of “festive oratory” for women was born.
First meeting with the founder
Father Pestarino visited Don Bosco at the Valdocco Oratory, was delighted with everything he saw and asked to join the Salesian Congregation.
Don Bosco accepted, but ordered him to remain in Mornesse, as director of the “Four Daughters”. The saint discerned in this small community the beginnings of the female branch that the Virgin had asked him for so many years ago in a dream.
Through Father Pestarino, Don Bosco sent a note to the Daughters of the Immaculate in Mornese, encouraging them and telling them that he would visit them soon.
October 7, 1864 marked Maria Mazzarello’s life profoundly: it was her first meeting with Don Bosco.
The people wanted to build a college for the Salesian Fathers on the hill of Borgo Alto. Don Bosco approved of the idea and promised to send two or three of his best priests.
Mary was filled with admiration when she heard the saint’s first sermon. During the five days he stayed in Mornese, she didn’t miss a single one of his homilies or his “Good evening” talks to the young people.
A new Congregation emerges
Don Bosco returned to Mornese in 1867 to inaugurate the chapel of the new school. He stayed in the village for four days and gave a talk to a small group of girls.
Two years later, he sent Maria and Petronilla a notebook written in his own handwriting, containing rules for them and the girls.
This manuscript has been lost, but Sister Petronila remembers that in it the saint gave them the following advice: to try to live habitually in the presence of God; to pray jaculatory prayers frequently; to act with gentleness, patience and kindness; to assist the girls with dedication, to keep them busy and to instill in them a simple, sincere and spontaneous life of piety.
In 1870, Don Bosco returned to Mornese to see the life of the “Daughters” up close. He wanted to examine the effect of his “little book”. He was completely satisfied!
Don Bosco then ordered the Daughters of the Immaculate to move into the newly-built school building, where they would lead a community life under the direction of Father Pestarino.
The people of Mornese had built the school for the education of boys… and perhaps they didn’t agree with this move.
In June of that same year, Don Bosco went to Rome and presented his plan to Pius IX, who, after a few days’ thought, told him: “Your plan seems to me to be according to God. I think that the main purpose of these sisters should be the instruction and education of girls, just as the Salesians do with boys. They depend on you and your successors”.
In January 1872, the “Daughters” met in assembly and elected their first superior: Maria Mazzarello.
Eight months later, on the feast of Our Lady of the Snows, in the presence of Bishop Giuseppe Maria Sciandra of Acqui and Don Bosco, the first fifteen young people took the habit.
The new congregation was founded and Don Bosco baptized it in prophetic terms: “You will use the name that my heart has long reserved for you: Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. Through you, Our Lady wants to come to the aid of poor girls. You are poor and few in number. But you will have so many pupils that you won’t know where to put them…”.
A difficult start
As Fr. Pestarino feared, the inhabitants of Mornese felt betrayed when the girls took over the school in Borgo Alto. Don Bosco had promised to send priests to look after the boys! – they argued.
It was in a climate of incomprehension and almost hostility that the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians began their religious life. No one else wanted to help them.
Poverty went beyond the bounds of misery. They lacked even the most basic foodstuffs. Many sisters rested their heads on a wooden stump wrapped in rags. The few pillows they had were used by the girls.
In these conditions, Mary always encouraged the sisters: “We are in God’s hands. We will receive everything: insults, mockery and even hunger, with a lot of love. When He wants, things will change”.
Two years later, Sister Maria Poggio died. She had suffered so much hunger and cold last winter that she had left in silence. The people of Mornese were moved to tears when they saw the skeletal young nuns, dressed in habit, praying the rosary at the funeral. Since then, the convent of Borgo Alto has never lacked cornmeal for polenta or flour for bread.
And the vision that Mary had had so many years before on that hill had come true.
Consolidation and expansion of the Congregation
In 1874, Don Bosco went to Mornese and decided to send several religious to found houses in other cities in Italy. And he gathered the community together to elect the Superior General of the Order. All the votes but one – his own – fell on Maria Mazzarello. Don Bosco, smiling, told her that it was the voice of God.
Three sisters left to open an oratory and school in Vallecrosia. Seven later went to Turin. Soon others arrived in Billa, Alassio, Lu Monferrato, Lanzo Turinese, Séstri Levante.
In 1877, Don Bosco invited them to be missionaries in South America, where some Salesian priests would follow. Mother Mazzarello sent six daughters, chosen from among several others who wanted to go.
Before long, the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians were a large family spread throughout the world.
Premature death
Becoming Superior General didn’t make Mother Mazzarello abandon her small services. She looked after the girls and the nuns like a real mother.
But her health began to decline. She walked with difficulty and, in the evenings, she would heat a brick in the kitchen to relieve some of the pain she felt on the right side of her torso. She had offered herself as an expiatory victim and Providence seemed to have accepted her.
In 1881, when she was in Saint-Cyr, France, the doctor diagnosed her with pleurisy at a very advanced stage. She complained of nothing and only gave good examples to her religious sisters.
The doctor gave her two months to live, and she decided to return to Nizza Monferrato, where the Mother House of the Congregation had moved years before. She died there on May 14, 1881.
Her last words to her weeping daughters were: “Goodbye! See you in heaven…”
With only 44 years to live, she was an example of humility and holiness, apostolic zeal and virginal purity.
Pius XI beatified her in 1939 and Pius XII canonized her in 1951. Her body, incorrupt, was transferred to an altar in the grand Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin.
Text taken, with adaptations, from the magazine Heralds of the Gospel n.77, May 2008.
Compiled by Teresa Joseph
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