Blessed Liduina Meneguzzi
On December 2nd, we celebrate the life of Blessed Liduina Meneguzzi (1901-1941). Elisa Angela Meneguzzi was born on September 12, 1901 to a humble and devout Italian farming family . A pious youth, she spent hours in prayer, attended daily Mass, and taught catechism. At the age of twenty-four, she gave herself totally to God, when she entered the Salesian convent in Padova, taking the name Liduina. She worked as a housekeeper, a nurse, and a sacristan in a girls' boarding school before being sent to Africa as a missionary in 1937. Sr. Liduina worked at a hospital in Dire-Dawa, Ethiopia, a large, cosmopolitan city with people of many backgrounds, races and religions including: Catholics, Copts, Muslims and native pagans. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the hospital was taken over by the Italian military and she devotedly cared for the wounded. When the city was bombed, she worked in the streets, carrying the wounded to shelter, baptizing dying children, leading ...