Bl. Maria Christina Brando

By the age of twelve, Adelaide Brando, of Naples, Italy, was a daily communicant who frequented the confessional. She was wont to say, "I must become holy; I want to be a saint." Adelaide repeatedly sought to enter religious life, but her poor health compelled both the Poor Clares and the Sacramentine Nuns to send her back to her family. She suffered from a chronic bronchitis so acute that it forced her each night to sleep upright in a chair, a disability that continued for the rest of her life. In her early twenties, Adelaide began to discern the need to found a new congregation for herself and several other like-minded young women, including her own sister Concetta, who had also been compelled to return home from the Poor Clares' convent. The "Sisters-Expiatory Victims of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament" devoted themselves to perpetual Eucharistic adoration and the schooling and spiritual formation of young girls. Adelaide took the religious name Maria Christina and served as mother superior, choosing for herself a cell adjacent to a church so as to be close to the tabernacle. She died on January 20, 1906.