Conference on the Holy Veil of Manoppello Saturday August 5 at Mater Dolorosa Church in South San Francisco

 

Sister Amalia Di Rella, Disciple of the Holy Face and Spiritual Daughter of Father Domenico da Cese

Sister Amalia Di Rella 

by Antonio Bini   

(Photos also courtesy of Antonio Bini)

website of the Association of the Holy Face in Ruvo di Puglia    https://www.associazionevoltosantoruvo.it/



The Association of the Holy Face of Ruvo di Puglia remembered Sister Amalia Di Rella at a conference in her native city 25 years after her death which took place in Genoa on June 16, 1988. After visiting the Shrine of the Holy Face and meeting Fr. Domenico da Cese during the annual celebration in May 1970, Sr. Amalia was moved to establish the Association. The gathering held at the historic Palazzo Caputi was moderated by the journalist Angela Ciciriello, who highlighted the nun's closeness to women who had difficulty in realizing their desire to become mothers. 

Speakers at the conference included Fr. Carmine Cucinelli, Fr. Peppino Lapenna, Fr. Mimmo Francavilla, director of Caritas of Andria, and myself.  . Fr. Carmine, the former rector of the Shrine of the Holy Face, not having personally known the nun, collected testimony from the Capuchins and other people of Manoppello who admired her in life for her devotion to the Holy Face, a model of faith for many people of the associations of the Holy Face of Ruvo di Puglia and Andria. Her willingness, along with that of those who accompanied her, to clean the church and the pilgrim's hotel with a spirit of joy was memorable. Everyone followed her with delight. "Sister Amalia said it," the devotees who accompanied her repeated to each other. The Capuchin then recalled a passage from the homily delivered by Mons. Calabro, bishop of Andria, on the occasion of the Mass celebrated to commemorate the thirtieth day following Sr. Amalia's death.

 Along the same lines was the talk by Don Peppino Lapenna, former parish priest of the church of San Michele Arcangelo in Andria, in which he underscored the impressive good works that Sister Amalia accomplished in favor of the sick and the elderly, as well as towards the church that was her reference in the years spent in Andria. Fr Mimmo Francavilla also wanted to remember how since he was a boy he had been struck by her extraordinary organizational skills and tireless work for the sick of UNITALSI (Italian organization to bring the sick on pilgrimage to Lourdes). 

Present at the meeting were Mons. Giuseppe Pischetti, vicar forane and Don Grazio Barile, chaplain of the Association of the Holy Face of Ruvo di Puglia. Many people followed the meeting with emotion, at the end of which coffee biscotti were distributed to those present in memory of the nun who loved to share simple convivial moments with those who joined her in her works and times of prayer.

But who was Sister Amalia Di Rella?

Many times I have met in Manoppello the Apulian devotees linked to Sister Amalia, especially on the occasion of their annual gatherings to remember Father Domenico, in particular after the proposal to start the process for his beatification proposed by the then Province of the Capuchins of Abruzzo. In 2014 I was in Ruvo, accompanying Father Carmine Cucinelli, afterwards writing about the Association and Sister Amalia in the Bulletin of the Shrine of the Holy Face.  

I would say that the spread of the cult of the Holy Face among so many people in Ruvo di Puglia and Andria, later constituted in Associations, represents a first significant result of the work of Sister Amalia, who in her simplicity and humility, was able to transmit her faith to a community, strengthened by the encounter with the Holy Face.

Faith is something personal and at the same time communal. Christianity in its reference to Christ inevitably has to do with the witness of other believers and it is to be believed that, also thanks to Father Domenico, Sister Amalia perceived in the Holy Face the divine character of Christ and at the same time the depth of his humanity.

 

The Holy Face, in fact, is not only an inexplicable object, but above all the living and dynamic image of a man, identified with Christ from the title of the first document that attests to its presence in Manoppello (cf. "Relatione Historica d'una miracolosa immagine del volto di Christo" A Historical Report of a miraculous image of the face of Christ by Father Donato da Bomba – 1640),   a circumstance that finds more and more parallels with the history of Christianity.

Father Domenico ardently believed in this, and tirelessly devoted all his energies until his death  to spreading the devotion to the Holy Face, .

The friar did not want to be spoken about, foreseeing in a prophetic way that both he and the Holy Face would be spoken about especially after his death.  

This has indeed happened and is still happening. The Holy Face in that distant 1970 – when Sister Amalia arrived in Manoppello – had for centuries been at the center of a strong local devotion, but there were few beyond the circle of neighboring towns who knew about the extraordinary image preserved by the Capuchins in Manoppello, while those rare publications that dealt with it described it with fleeting hints, which indicated it to be a painting, as in so many reproductions that can be found in churches around the world.

Father Domenico openly supported the authenticity of the Holy Face, writing on holy cards which he had printed, that it was the "sudarium present in the tomb of Jesus" or that the image was "not producible by a human brush", considering it in other words an acheropite image.  ("acheropite" the Greek word for "not made by human hands")

In the run-up to the Great Jubilee of 2000, the studies on the identification of the Holy Face with the Veronica (true icon) carried out by Jesuit Fr. Heinrich Pfeiffer (Tübingen, 1939 – Berlin, 2021), authoritative professor of Christian art at the Gregorian University of Rome, gradually found the interest of the international press, to the point of convincing Pope Benedict XVI himself of the validity of his research. Here it is also necessary to recall the studies of Sister Blandina Paschalis Schlömer on the superimposition of the Holy Face with the Shroud. The German pontiff visited the Shrine on September 1, 2006. 

 Since then we have seen pilgrims come from all over the world to Manoppello, hundreds of bishops and cardinals, while the spread of the Holy Face has led to solemn enthronements of copies in a number of churches in various countries, also thanks to specific missions (in particular in the United States, the Philippines, Poland and Canada). In this regard, it should be remembered, that on March 31, 1979, six months after the death of Fr. Domenico, in the church of Purgatory in Ruvo there arguably took place the first enthronement of the Holy Face, during a solemn ceremony, presided over by the bishop pro-tempore mons. Aldo Garzia[1]. Today the enthronements are beyond number. 

Enthronement of the Holy Face at the Church of Purgatory in Ruvo.  Sister Amalia is at the right.

Twenty years before the Pope arrived in Manoppello, Don Tonino Bello, bishop of the diocese, recognized the "Pious Union of the Disciples of the Holy Face", approving its statutes on May 8, 1986. It was the bishop who by his act gave them this title, recognizing how Sister Amalia wanted to follow Christ by becoming his disciple.

The primary objective of the Pious Union was set in the "sanctification of its members through the practice of the evangelical counsels and the free service of assistance given to the least of the brothers and sisters in the persons of the sick", a service also corresponding to the demands of the Bishop's own pastoral mission. We could say that the Venerable Don Tonino already had his own idea about the horizons of holiness of Sister Amalia, whose holiness was the reference assumed as the basis of the statutes. Even before the approval of the statutes, Don Tonino Bello, a pastor who was always on the side of the least, had turned to their collaboration, assigning to it, among other duties, the care of the community for the assistance of drug addicts (today Casa Don Tonino Bello), which the bishop, in order to confront a rampant social emergency, had inaugurated in Ruvo on December 8, 1984.

The Pious Union depends directly on the bishop and is animated by an "elder sister" chosen by mutual agreement. The members of the group remain in the lay state, even after consecration through simple vows, and have no life in common except for periodic prayer meetings.

Article 5 of the Statutes states that "their spirituality is centered on devotion to the Holy Face of N.S.G.C. [our Lord Jesus Christ], lived in contemplation and assimilation of the Paschal Mystery."

Don Tonino, recognized as Venerable in 2021, came to know about the Holy Face through the strong devotional energy of Sister Amalia, and also personally as he would have gone once to Manoppello, together with the three Disciples of the Holy Face for their spiritual exercises. This is what Sister Maria Matera told me.

The reference to the Paschal Mystery suggests that Don Tonino had developed a personal idea of the Holy Face as the face of the Risen One. A thesis that will be amply developed several years later (see also the title of the book by Saverio Gaeta, Il Volto del Risorto, ed. Famiglia Cristiana, 2005). Even the subsequent updating of the statutes of the Association of the Holy Face, approved in 1989, reflects the imprint of Don Tonino Bello, so that the elaboration of the statutes of the Pious Union of the Disciples of the Holy Face must be considered entirely his.

Mons. Nicola Girasoli records in a significant testimony what Don Tonino told him about Sister Amalia whom he considered "a holy woman who does much for the sick and the poor". Among the sick there were a number of elderly priests.

The Bishop's testimony on the virtues of Sister Amalia Di Rella – dated June 16, 2009 – a date that is not accidental, as it coincides with the eleventh anniversary of the death of the "little Franciscan sister" – as many called her. I received a copy of this testimony from Br. Vincenzo D'Elpidio (Guardia Vomano, 1932 – Pescara, 2020), closely linked to Fr. Domenico, as well as to Sr. Amalia and to the devotees from Apulia. I have not been able to ascertain who were the recipients of Mons. Girasoli's testimony, although I have reason to think that among them there was the Bishop pro-tempore of Molfetta.

 

Brother Vincenzo with Sister Amalia

Msgr. Girasoli, also born in Ruvo di Puglia, currently the apostolic nuncio in Slovakia, knew Sister Amalia from the time of his early childhood, being struck "by her spirit of prayer and dedication to the poor and the sick".

Then the encounter with Domenico da Cese – in 1970 – which the apostolic nuncio defines as "a turning point on her path of holiness", guiding Sister Amalia on her spiritual journey, leading her to religious consecration and to the establishment of the Association of the Holy Face of Ruvo. The same apostolic nuncio, ordained in 1980, states he had taken part, as a young seminarian, in several pilgrimages to Manoppello, to the Shrine of the Holy Face, which he came to know about thanks to Sister Amalia and the Association of the Holy Face. Inevitable his meeting with Fr. Domenico da Cese. Msgr. Girasoli affirms that "his profound gaze and his lucid and effective words have remained impressed upon me exhorting me to go forward in my vocational journey".

 

Father Domenico da Cese at Ruvo.  Sister Amalia is at the right

A number of people have given their testimony about Sister Amalia, however the one released by Mgr. Girasoli, who affirms that the nun "certainly exercised the Christian virtues to a heroic degree", has the merit of combining a long and frequent personal acquaintance to the effort to understand the profile of holiness of Sister Amalia, in the hoped-for perspective - strongly affirmed- "that the canonical process begins to verify her exercise of the virtues to a heroic degree, hoping one day to see her, God willing, venerated on the altars." The Nuncio's considerations are also the result of continuous observation over time, as when as a young priest he accompanied a pilgrimage to Lourdes organized by Sister Amalia and the Association of the Holy Face in 1982.

Regarding the famous French shrine, we can only wonder what Sister Amalia would have thought about the fact that several years later, in 2010, Mons. Philippe Pherrier, bishop of the Diocese of Tarbes-Lourdes would come as a pilgrim to Manoppello, and was so strongly impressed by that visit, to the point of wanting to organize an exhibition on the Holy Face in Lourdes, actually realized in the years 2011 and 2012.

With regard to the reputation of holiness, it should be remembered that – according to the Church – it is a reputation which manifests itself spontaneously among a significant part of the people, and must not be aroused superficially through media propaganda. In the case of Sister Amalia the question does not arise, indeed the opposite problem seems to exist, with the strong memory of holiness restricted to the individual sphere of many people and members of the Association, who have personally handed down her memory, in the silence of a wider communication.

Only in recent days has the first biography of Sister Amalia been published, after having been filed away in a cabinet for a long time[2].

But an emerging communication phenomenon is taking place far from Puglia. I am referring to the growing dissemination of the Holy Face in the world, which began on the eve of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 and developed more and more after Benedict XVI's visit to Manoppello on September 1,  2006. The latter situation also is noted in the testimony of Mons. Girasoli.

Following in the wake of the Holy Face, the extraordinary figure of Fr. Domenico da Cese, who explicitly believed in the divine origin and authenticity of the Holy Face.

The human and religious story of the humble nun often appears together with that of Fr. Domenico, as in the "Illustrated Biography of Father Domenico da Cese, Capuchin", edited by Sister. Petra-Maria Steiner, Vita Communis, Waiblingen, 2018 (the book has been published in German, English and Italian) and the very recent work by Aleksandra Zapotoczny, published last February in Poland, with the title "Stygmatyk z Manoppello" (the Stigmatist of Manoppello), The life, miracles and mystical experiences of Father Domenico of the Holy Face of Jesus". [3]

Sister Amalia in prayer during the Vigil for Father Domenico

Returning to Mons. Girasoli, his testimony seems to be structured to correspond to the principles that govern the causes of beatification and canonization and I believe it can be interpreted in even greater terms with respect to the feeling of the wider community of people who knew and loved Sister Amalia.

It must also be said that the process of canonization represents a long and complex path, which responds to the need for caution on the part of the Church (or, better, of the ecclesiastical hierarchies) and at the same time presents wide discretionary spaces, as also demonstrated by the troubled path of Father Domenico da Cese, who is also supported by numerous testimonies, including those expressed by religious, and supported by extraordinary facts, such as the bilocation of the friar at the funeral of St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina.

A cause of canonization involves considerable expense and requires constant commitment, a real organization, together with a dedication that can last many years.

It is not always easy for the laity to understand the application of the norms governing the matter, their interpretation and the choices made by the Church.

It is certainly no coincidence that the Augustinian Romualdo Rodrigo, author of an appreciated Manual of the Causes of Beatification and Canonization, admitted that "the holiest candidates before God are not always candidates for canonization."[4] It is relatively comforting that the final goal of canonizations is not the servants of God – since the saints certainly do not need to be declared as such – but it is the faithful, since they need the Church to propose new models of holiness.

And Sister Amalia was born and lived in poverty, wearing the Franciscan habit. She was a charismatic personality,certainly an example especially in consideration of her precarious health conditions which, despite her sufferings, did not prevent her from continuing to give herself totally to others.[5]

To the physical sufferings were added the moral ones. Mons. Girasoli alludes to this in his testimony as she was the victim of unjust "envy and jealousy", if not outright slander and humiliation, as also found in oral testimonies. Confirmations of these strong discomforts come from some letters written by Father Domenico in response to the nun, who must have made known to him the situations of which she was a victim.[6]

It is common to hear from those who knew her that the hospital wards and the homes of the sick were her convent.

A final hospitalization took place at the San Martino Hospital in Genoa where Sister Amalia died "in the concept of holiness"[7] on June 16, 1998. A coincidence: both  Fr. Domenico, who died on September 17, 1978 in Turin, as well as Sister Amalia herself died during an exposition of the Shroud. She was 64 years old. From the biography edited by Michele Ippedico, it would seem that her death had been foretold to her in a dream by St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina thirty years after the death of the saint.

Suor Amalia's Grave

In conclusion, we recall a passage from the homily given by the then bishop of Andria, Mons. Raffaele Calabro, delivered on July 15, 1998, at the Mass commemorating the 30th day after the death of Sister Amalia and reported in full in no. 2/1998 of the Rivista del Volto Santo (Bulletin of the Shrine of the Holy Face of Manoppello), preceded by the heartfelt introduction of Fr. Germano Di Pietro, then rector in Manoppello, with the title "Sister Amalia has left us".

"The Eucharist we are celebrating allows us to gather our feelings of pain, gratitude and affection to remember a person who left an indelible mark on the lives of all of us and of many who knew her and benefited from her discreet and silent charity and there are truly many. For ourselves we ask at the Eucharistic Table that we might know how to continue the work she began with the same spirit, in humility and joy without scattering and forgetting her teaching".

The meeting in Ruvo di Puglia is undoubtedly in continuity with the wishes of the bishop.

[1] Tonina Cantatore, Da Ruvo di Puglia, in Rivista del Volto Santo, n. 1, June, 1979, p.32; In a photo accompanying the article, Sister Amalia appears alongside Mons. Garzia.


[2] Michele Ippedico, La pupazza di Dio, (The puppet, or rag doll of God) ed. Youcanprint, Tricase, 2023. a brief explanation of the title is a must. It seems that Sr. Amalia defined herself in this way, to indicate a worn rag doll in the hands of the Lord, a bit like Sister Teresa of Calcutta who said she was "a small pencil in His hands";


[3] The book was presented in Poland in the cities of Wadowice and Krakow where in recent years copies of the Holy Face were enthroned.

[4] Romualdo Rodrigo, Manuale delle cause di Beatificazione e canonizzazione, ed. Istitutum Historicum Augustinianorum Recollectorum, Roma, 2004, p.12;


[5] Precarious health characterized the life of Sister Amalia, with numerous hospital admissions and multiple surgeries (as many as 17, according to the testimony of Brother Vincenzo D'Elpidio on March 15, 2007). The pains manifested themselves mainly in her wrists, hands, and legs, during Lent, so much so that she was bedridden. In the last years of her life she wore gloves on her hands, leading many people to think that they were used to cover the stigmata. The statement issued on April 4, 2014 by Mrs. Maria Zagaria, in whose home Sister Amalia lived from November 1988 until her death, was also considered.

Unfortunately, medical documentation is very much lacking, limited to a certificate issued on April 23, 1979 by Dr. Vincenza Fracchiola of Ruvo di Puglia, a specialist in infectious diseases, which certifies that Sister Amalia suffered from many diseases ever since she was a young child and was repeatedly hospitalized towards the end of her life. It refers to stomach surgery, heart failure and regressive pulmonary edema.

[6] In a letter of June 1974, Fr. Dominic speaks of the "perversity of professions that have never believed in God." In another letter of March 1976 Fr. Domenico writes "Dear Amalia, we must pray a lot and have a lot of patience for so many adversities that come to us from bad people who are never lacking in any country. Remember that every day you must carry the cross that was assigned to you from heaven." The friar comforted her with his constant prayer to the Holy Face. On the other hand, the life of Fr. Dominic himself was not exempt from difficulties and misunderstandings, sometimes even from within the Capuchin Order;

[7] Eugenio Vittorio Di Giamberardino, Padre Domenico da Cese, Edizioni Frati Minori Cappuccini d'Abruzzo, L'Aquila, 2014, p. 35;