By ALBERTO CAROSA
The now-defunct Catholic journal 30 Giorni (number 12, 1999) once quoted former Danish Ambassador Henrik Ree Iversen as saying that Mother Tekla Famiglietti, the abbess of the Bridgettine nuns, “is the most powerful woman in the Catholic Church today.”
Since late October 2016, Mother Tekla is no longer at the head of her congregation, which nevertheless has retained and possibly even increased its prestige and influence thanks to the canonization in July 2016 of Mother Maria Elizabeth Hesselblad, who re-established the Bridgettine Order in 1911 in the footsteps of its original foundress, St. Bridget of Sweden.
But, interestingly, there is another female religious congregation, albeit much younger, that is gaining increasing prominence in the Catholic Church today: the Suore Benedettine Riparatrici del Sacro Volto di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo (R.S.V.) or Benedictine Sisters of Reparation of the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
This religious order was founded by the Venerable Abbot Ildebrando Gregori (1894-1985) in 1950 with the aim of promoting devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus as reparation for the many insults He suffered during His Passion. The order is headquartered in Via della Conciliazione, just a few steps away from St. Peter’s in Rome, and in late 2008 already numbered 138 religious in 19 houses in Europe (Italy, Poland, and Romania), in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in India.
Apparently, this order first gained worldwide fame when Benedict XVI on August 6, 2010 made a surprise visit to one of the order’s houses, the Eremo of San Francesco, an old, magnificently restored convent on a hilltop in the woods of Poggio Cinolfo near Carsoli (in the province of L’Aquila, capital of Abruzzo), a few kilometers away from the border with the province of Rome, roughly on the 70th kilometer of the ancient Roman road Tiburtina-Valeria, stretching eastward to connect Rome to Pescara on the Adriatic coast.
This convent came under the international spotlight a second time with another surprise visit, this one on August 9, 2016 by Pope Francis. This visit marked the Holy Father’s first contact with Abruzzo and its hidden religious treasures. He promised the nuns he would come back.
This location of the convent could be called providential for a number of reasons. Abbot Ildebrando Gregori was in fact born Alfredo Antonio Gregori in Poggio Cinolfo and it was in this Eremo of San Francesco, which at the time housed Capuchin friars, that he had his first experience of religious life. At the age of 12 — under the guidance of Francesco Cardinal Segna (1836-1911), the then prefect of the Congregation of the Index and a native of Poggio Cinolfo — Alfredo was accepted within the Congregation of the Benedictine Silvestrine Monks and took up the religious name of Ildebrando.
After studies in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome he was ordained to the priesthood at the age of 28, on October 29, 1922. Subsequently, Dom Ildebrando was named as formation master and director of the novices of his Benedictine congregation, an office he held for 20 years, until his appointment as general abbot.
He developed his devotion to the Holy Face after he met Blessed Sr. Maria Pierina de Micheli (1890-1945) of the Daughters of the Immaculate Conception of Buenos Aires (the congregation was originally based in Argentina’s capital) in Rome in 1939.
The saintly nun had already begun promoting the devotion to the Holy Face. after our Lord in a vision told her: “I will that my Face, which reflects the intimate pains of my Spirit, the suffering and the love of my Heart, be more honored. He who meditates upon me, consoles me.”
If on the one hand Abbot Gregori found in Blessed Sr. Maria Pierina a source of inspiration, on the other hand she found in him a spiritual director who not only understood, but supported, assimilated, and propagated devotion to the Holy Face.
During World War II, the abbot opened his monastery for refugees, orphans, and marginalized and sick people, treating them with paternal care and love. In other words, he showed a heroic charity toward them, in whom he saw the very face of the crucified Christ.
In 1950 this apostolate led to the foundation of “Prayerful Sodality,” which in 1977 became a religious female congregation called Pontifical Congregation of the Benedictine Sisters of Reparation of the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Abbot Gregori founded another religious community, the “Deo Gratias,” located in Rome in the Via della Conciliazione, where the religious stayed until his death on November 12, 1985, at the venerable age of 91. His mortal remains were buried inside the choir of the major chapel of the mother house of the congregation he founded, which is headquartered in Bassano Romano, a picturesque town halfway from Rome to Viterbo in the north.
From then on an unceasing and increasing procession of faithful started to flock to his tomb, especially on the anniversary of his passing, to pray for his intercession with faith, devotion, and humility.
Since his process of beatification is already underway and Pope Francis declared him venerable on November 7, 2014, it is probably only a matter of time until Abbot Gregori will be officially proclaimed blessed and then a saint of the Catholic Church, although two miracles obtained through his intercession must first take place and then be approved.
Interestingly, another tomb is inserted on the opposite side of the wall where Abbot Gregori was laid to rest: that of Fiorenzo Cardinal Angelini (1916-2014), former president of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health-Care Workers, who was closely associated to the abbot for decades.
Angelini’s parents were natives of Poggio Cinolfo and he is considered a spiritual son of Dom Gregori. Angelini facilitated the installment of the Benedictine nuns at the Eremo in Poggio Cinolfo, at the time hosting some Passionist Fathers, and in 1997 established the International Institute for Research on the Face of Christ in Rome, together with the Pontifical Congregation of the Benedictine Sisters of Reparation of the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
This institute promotes, through annual congresses, publications, and programs, a deeper reflection on the Face of Jesus and increased devotion to it. These congresses have traditionally taken place in late September with Cardinal Angelini as keynote speaker in his capacity as president of the institute. He passed away on November 22, 2014, but he was still able to participate in that year’s congress, a couple of months before his death.
If we look at the following events, we notice that the proceedings were ushered in by another senior prelate, the prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Beniamino Cardinal Stella, on both occasions as the newly installed president of the institute. Former president of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, Stella was named prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy on September 21, 2013.
Pope Francis also named him a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in late October 2016. On that occasion, the well-known Vaticanista Marco Tosatti described him as a prelate whom “not a few in the Vatican consider as the real éminence grise behind the Pontiff.”
Be that as it may, for those who may still try to figure out what the position of Cardinal Stella is vis-à-vis the congregation of the above Benedictine nuns, the picture was clarified on November 12, 2016, during the annual pilgrimage to Bassano Romano on the anniversary of the abbot’s death.
The author of this article for the first time joined the pilgrimage last November and had the chance to witness a ceremony at the end of a concelebrated Mass presided over by Cardinal Stella in the church “L’Assunta” in the Mother House of the Benedictine congregation. The superior general, Mother Maurizia Biancucci, handed over a symbolic silver-plated key to His Eminence with these words: “We are pleased to put in your hands the key of our congregation.” The significance of such a gesture is self-evident: defining Cardinal Stella’s role as the successor of the late Cardinal Angelini.
But later developments also indicated increasing Vatican attention to the Benedictine congregation and its activities, such as the two days commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth and the second anniversary of the death of Cardinal Angelini, on December 2, 2016, and November 22, 2016, respectively. These days saw a commemorative conference by Professor Andrea Riccardi, the founder of Comunità di Sant’Egidio, at Pontificia Università Urbaniana and a concelebrated Mass led by the Vatican secretary of state, Pietro Cardinal Parolin.
A very busy year indeed for the spiritual daughters of Abbot Gregori and their institute, which was capped on December 17, 2016, by the usual presentation of the proceedings of the September symposium. Cardinal Stella served as the keynote speaker at that event.
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