Anna Maria Adorni

Anna Maria Adorni Botti (19 June 1805 – 7 February 1893), born Anna Maria Adorni, was an Italian religious sister of the Handmaids of the Immaculata, a congregation she established in 1857. Botti's vocation was to the religious life, and as a child believed she was destined for the missions and later as a Franciscan religious sister. After being widowed, she did pastoral work in Parma, where she established and ran the congregation of the Handmaids of the Immaculata until her death.

Botti was beatified on 3 October 2010 in the Parma Cathedral. Archbishop Angelo Amato presided over the beatification on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI who had approved the cause.

Life Anna Maria Adorni was born in Fivizzano on 19 June 1805 to Matteo Adorni and Antonia Zanetti; she was baptized the following 23 June. At the age of seven - in 1812 - left her home with a friend to join the missions but this never materialized as she was bought back home. However the religious calling within her blossomed, and she was resolved to live her life in the service of God.

This process took place despite the fact that the Congregation of Rites - under Pope Pius XII - did not grant formal approval to the beatification cause until 11 January 1952. Following this a second process opened in Parma that spanned from 25 March 1953 until 10 March 1956; this process and the one prior were validated on 30 October 1959.

After an intensive investigation led in Rome she was proclaimed to be Venerable on 6 February 1978 after Pope Paul VI recognized the fact that she had lived a model Christian life of heroic virtue and exercised both the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues.

The miracle required for her beatification was investigated in the diocese of its origins in two separate processes: the first one spanned from 29 February 1940 and closed on 5 April 1943 - this occurred on a concurrent level to the first diocesan process. The second process of the healing was from 5 March 1953 until 10 March 1956, when the second diocesan process closed. It wasn't until several decades later, on 19 June 2006, that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints ratified those two processes and began their own investigation in Rome.

On 27 March 2010, her beatification was granted approval after Pope Benedict XVI determined that the healing was indeed a legitimate miracle. Archbishop Angelo Amato - on behalf of the pope - presided over the beatification on 3 October 2010 in the Parma Cathedral. The postulator assigned to the cause is Father Guglielmo Camera.