Consolata Betrone

Sister Maria Consolata Betrone (6 April 1903 – 18 July 1946), baptised as Pierina Maria Betrone was a Catholic mystic and nun of the Franciscan Capuchine Order. Betrone was born in Saluzzo, Piedmont, Italy in a middle-class family, and later died in the convent of Moriondo, Testona, Italy.

She was known for the intense propagation of the Holy Rosary, along with an apparition by the Sacred Heart of Jesus and her personal Guardian Angel in 1916 during the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The messages asked the recitation of "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I love you! Save Souls!", an ejaculate prayer which Betrone says to release a soul from Purgatory and pardons 1000 blasphemies against the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The pious devotion is very popular among Filipino and Portuguese Catholics, who include invocations in their recitation of the Rosary along with the Fatima Prayer.[1]

Life

Pierina Betrone was the daughter of Pietro Betrone and Giuseppina Nirino, the owners of a bakery in Saluzzo (Cuneo) and then managers of a restaurant in Airasco (Turin), Pierina was the second of six daughters born of her father's second marriage.[2]

After three failed attempts to join active orders, she was advised by her confessor to enter the Convent of the Poor Clares in Turin. On February 28, 1930 she took the veil under the name Sister Maria Consolata. (The Blessed Virgin Mary is venerated in Turin under the name of Consolata, i.e., Consoler of the Afflicted.)[2]

She is known for her prayer: "Jesus, Mary, I love you: Save souls" which are not only some words meant to be used as an ejaculatory prayer. It is a concrete way to fully and deeply live the "Little Way of Love" taught by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (Saint Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus et de la Sainte Face).

This prayer contains both Christ's Gospel teachings about Love : Love first the Lord with all our heart and soul, strength and mind ("Jesus, Mary, I love you"...), second, love others like ourselves (... "save souls"). "Souls" means "all souls" : from the priests and consecrated persons to the last sinners in the World, including Purgatory Souls. Then, this prayer, said all day long with the heart, means that for each "Jesus, Mary, I love you, save souls", one soul is saved.

Sister Consolata spent her whole life attempting to bring to perfection this Tiny Way of Love. She used to fight every thought, every word, every emotion, to keep unceasing her "Jesus, Mary, save souls" all day long, not to spoil one of them (because only one of them means a soul, as Jesus taught her).

After Sister Consolata's death, Father Lorenzo Sales wrote the book "Jesus Appeals to the World" based on her reported messages.[3]

In 1995 Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini started the canonical process of beatification for Sister Mary Consolata Betrone.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Michael Freze, 1993, Voices, Visions, and Apparitions, OSV Publishing ISBN 0-87973-454-X
  2. 1 2 3 "A Life For Love", Monastery of the Sacred Heart
  3. ↑ Father Lorenzo Sales, 1955 Jesus Appeals to the World: From the Writings of Sr. Consolata Betrone Alba House Publishers ISBN 0-8189-0069-5

External links

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