Maria Schininà

Maria Schininà (10 April 1844 – 11 June 1910), also known by her religious name Maria of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was an Italian Roman Catholic nun and the founder of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Her adolescence demonstrated no particular spiritual emphasis though the death of her father and the marriage of her brother prompted a sudden inner conversion that saw her reach out and collaborate with the ill and the poor; she began in 1885 the foundations for what would become the religious congregation that she set up in 1889.

Her beatification cause started in 1975 and culminated in the formal beatification that occurred on 4 November 1990.

Life Maria Schininà was born on 10 April 1844 in Ragusa to the nobles Giambattista Schininà and Rosalia Arezzo as the fifth of eight children. The beatification process opened in two informative processes in which one had run in Ragusa from 2 April 1937 until 1945 while the second opened a decade later in 1956 and closed in 1957; the Congregation for the Causes of Saints later validated these processes over two decades later on 25 November 1983. The formal introduction to the cause came under Pope Paul VI on 16 January 1975 in which she was titled as a Servant of God. The C.C.S. received the Positio and passed it to theologians who assented to its contents on 13 December 1988 with the C.C.S. following on 21 March 1989. Pope John Paul II confirmed her heroic virtue and named her as Venerable on 13 May 1989.

The process for a miracle spanned from 5 March 1981 until 11 January 1982 and received C.C.S. validation on 17 December 1983; a medical board confirmed it as a miracle on 25 October 1989 as did theologians on 2 February 1990 and the C.C.S. on 13 March 1990. John Paul II approved it on 9 April 1990 and beatified the late nun on 4 November 1990.

The current postulator for this cause is Sr. Concetta Aranzulla.