Maria Crocifissa di Rosa

alt=Altar and funeral monument of Maria Crocifissa di Rosa in the Handmaids of Charity chapel in Brescia. Maria Crocifissa Di Rosa (6 November 1813 – 15 December 1855) - born as Paola Francesca Di Rosa - was an Italian Roman Catholic professed religious and the founder of the Ancelle della carità (1839). Di Rosa worked first at her father's spinning mill where she - with his encouragement - tended to the spiritual and material needs of the female workers while gathering several women to dedicate their collective efforts to caring for the poor; this formed the basis for the establishment of her religious congregation. Her apostolate prioritized tending to the ill in hospitals and to soldiers going to the front.

Her beatification was celebrated in mid-1940 and Pope Pius XII (who beatified her) canonized her over a decade later on 12 June 1954. she left school after her mother died in 1824. She began working in her father's large spinning mill in Acquafredda where she took an instant notice of the working conditions; she became the manager when she turned nineteen. She began caring for the female workers and devoted herself to looking after their material and spiritual needs which was something that her father encouraged her to do.

The cause for her canonization was opened on 7 January 1951. Pius XII confirmed two additional miracles attributed to Di Rosa on 17 January 1954 and canonized her as a saint in Saint Peter's Basilica on 12 June 1954.