Leopoldina Naudet

Leopoldina Naudet (31 May 1773 - 17 August 1834) was an Italian Roman Catholic of both French and Austrian origins. She was a religious sister of the Congregation of Dilette of Jesus and the foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Verona. Naudet served in the court of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor and after his death served his daughter Maria Anna who became an abbess and professed religious alongside Naudet and her sister.

Naudet was noted for her strong devotion to the education of females and assigned her order to the moral and civic education of all girls in Verona where her order was based in. She focused on religious values in the curriculum that her order provided and also devoted herself to the precepts of her order that would receive papal approval months before her death.

She was proclaimed to be Venerable on 6 July 2007 after Pope Benedict XVI recognized that Naudet had lived a model life of heroic virtue. Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to her intercession on 21 December 2016 and her beatification was celebrated on 29 April 2017 in Verona.

Life Leopoldina Naudet was born in Florence in 1773 as the eldest daughter of Giuseppe Naudet and Susanna von Arnth. Her father was French, and a senior official at the court of Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Her mother was the daughter of an Austrian officer.

Susanna Naudet died in 1778 and Leopoldina was entrusted to the Nuns of St. Frediano in Florence. She became to close their daughter Archduchess Maria Anna.

In 1790, Leopold became Holy Roman Emperor. Naudet and her sister Luisa joined the Imperial Consort Maria Luisa when Leopold's court moved to Vienna. In 1791, Archduchess Maria Anna became Abbess of the Chapter of Nuns of St. George's Convent, Prague. Naudet held positions of trust in the institute known as the Beloved of Jesus to which she committed herself in collaboration with the Archduchess. She entered Maria Anna's direct service in 1792 following the death of the Emperor. While in Prague, Naudet had as her spiritual director Father Nicholas Diessbach. She also came into contact with Father Niccolò Paccanari and she favored the Congregation of Dilette of Jesus that he himself had established; the two also worked in the Beloved of Jesus.