Teresa Merlo

Maria Teresa Merlo (20 February 1894 — 5 February 1964), religious name Tecla, was an Italian religious sister and the co-founder of the Daughters of Saint Paul that she established alongside Giacomo Alberione. Merlo was an indefatigable writer and traveller as she penned articles for her order and made visits across the world to communities that were established in nations such as the United States of America and Australia.

Pope John Paul II conferred the title of a venerable upon her in 1991 after confirming that she had lived a life of heroic virtue.

Life Childhood and education Maria Teresa Merlo was born on 20 February 1894 in Cuneo as the second of four children of peasant farmers Ettore and Vincenza Rolando Merlo; her siblings, Leone Costanzo, Giovanni Battista, and Carlo, all became priests. She received the sacrament of baptism on 22 February 1894 in the parish church of Saint John the Baptist from Father Pietro Palladino; her godparents were Leone Merlo and Margherita Rava Rolando. Merlo desired to live the life of a religious and so decided to pursue this call; she received encouragement from Alberione, who convinced her to help him found a religious order he had been thinking of establishing. On 29 June 1915, she moved into the home of Angela Boffi to help found this order with Alberione.

Daughters of Saint Paul She co-founded the Daughters of Saint Paul alongside Alberione in 1915. From August 1915 until 1918, she and her companions frequented the Catechetical League in the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano and began to attend religious education courses that the canon Chiesa (1874–1946) ran and also began to teach catechism in the parish. In May 1927 she visited the generalate in Rome in what could have been her first visit. She and other sisters assumed the habit for the first time on 30 October 1928, while she later travelled to Salerno on 5 November 1928 with a group of religious to set up a house of the order there. She likewise travelled with other religious to Cagliari on 5 February 1929 for the same mission.

Merlo made her perpetual profession on 19 March 1929 and later sent her first circular letter as Superior General to the communities of the congregation on 26 December 1929. She travelled to Messina in June 1931 to assist in the establishment of a new house and on 29 November 1932 drew up her will in which she declared all she possessed would go to the congregation after her death. Some of her writings became available after the order's internal news source Eco di Casa Madre commenced its printing run on 1 January 1934. In December 1935 – upon Alberione's advice – she issued rules that demanded mandatory periodical correspondence between sisters and their Superior General with a particular focus on Christmas and the feast of Saint Paul. Alberione presided over a Mass in the hospital's chapel on the following 7 February while Cardinal Arcadio Larraona Saralegui celebrated the solemn funeral Mass on 8 February in the church of Santa Maria Regina degli Apostoli Montagnola. Merlo was buried at Campo Verano, but was exhumed on 3 February 1967 and her remains taken to the church for a special Mass on 6 February and the re-interment on 7 February.

Alberione said of Merlo's death: "It was the Lord who sustained her. She was a contemplative person. She had recourse to people, but she had recourse first and foremost to God".

Beatification process The beatification process commenced in an informative process that opened in Albano on 26 October 1967 and concluded its work – after having collected documentation and available interrogatories (including that of Alberione) – on 23 March 1972. A smaller process opened in Alba on 10 December 1968 and closed on 4 May 1971, while theologians approved her writings as being orthodox on 24 May 1974. An apostolic process was held from 21 October 1982 until 17 June 1987.

The formal introduction to the cause was issued on 25 February 1982, once the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved and conferred the title of a Servant of God. The Congregation validated the three previous processes on 18 December 1987 and later received the positio from the postulation in 1989. Theologians voiced approval of the cause on 22 June 1990, as did the Congregation themselves on 4 December 1990. On 22 January 1991, Pope John Paul II confirmed that she had lived a model Christian life of heroic virtue and thus named her venerable.

A miracle was investigated in the diocese of its origin and received validation on 26 September 1996, while a medical board based in Rome issued approval of the purported miracle on 16 December 1999. The postulator that is assigned to the cause is the Rev. José Antonio Pérez Sánchez.