Overview
- Catholic outlets mark December 15 by commemorating Santa María Crucificada de la Rosa (Paola Francesca Di Rosa), a 19th-century Italian religious from Brescia.
- Early experience in her family’s mill shaped her commitment to support working women and vulnerable children through parish missions and organized aid.
- In 1840 she founded the Siervas de la Caridad to serve hospital patients, and the community quickly expanded from four members to dozens with her as superior.
- She died on December 15, 1855; the congregation received Vatican approval in 1850 under Pope Pius IX, and she was beatified in 1940 and canonized in 1954 by Pius XII at St. Peter’s Basilica.
- The daily santoral shift follows December 14’s observance of San Juan de la Cruz, the Carmelite reformer and mystical poet who died on December 14, 1591, after imprisonment in 1577.