Description

Oil Dedicated to Ven Rachelina ambrosini

The Ven Rachelina Ambrosini is dedicated to the Italian teenager who died in 1941.

Rachelina Ambrosini was an Italian Roman Catholic adolescent.  Her childhood was marked with great devotion to the Blessed Mother.  Also, she was known for her intelligent and gentle disposition to those she came into contact with.  In 1930s she had a dream in which she was told she would die before she turned sixteen. This came to pass after she died from severe meningitis in 1941.

Rachelina Ambrosini was born in mid-1925.  She was the sole child born to Doctor Alberto Ambrosini  and Filomena Sodrillo.  This was in the Avellino province.   Her paternal uncle was a priest. Her baptism was celebrated on 7 November 1925.

Our Lady appears to Rachelina

In 1929 she was in the garden at her house when she saw the Blessed Mother.  She ran to tell her mother of this: “You know mamma I saw the Madonna!” Marian devotions came from her mother who oversaw her initial religious formation in her childhood.  Ambrosini made her First Communion on 12 June 1932. In 1933 she contracted the measles and recovered from this. In school she told her teacher that in her illness she had a vision of Saint Antonio who healed her.  He also told her that he would guide her to Heaven upon her death. And that this would happen before she turned sixteen.

The girl became distinguished for her great devotion and faith from her childhood.  She was known to be an outgoing and intelligent child who was gentle and obedient to those around her. In Bari she attended middle school before moving to Rome.  There her high school studies were directed by the nuns..  In 1936 her father suffered from a grave illness to which his daughter offered her own life in exchange for his.  Her father soon recovered.

Rachelina becomes sick

In 1941 she developed purulent otitis – a severe ear infection – coupled with severe meningitis. She was hospitalized on 26 February. The adolescent also predicted the date of her death. Her death came in a Roman hospital on 10 March 1941 after having received Extreme Unction.   Her remains were later exhumed from her grave in Campanarello.  They were relocated to the Santa Maria e Sant’Alessio church in Venticano on 28 September 1958.

The beatification process opened in Benevento in December 1958.  Theologians discussed and approved the dossier on 19 November 2010 with the cardinal and bishop members of the C.C.S. also approving the cause in their meeting held on 3 April 2012. Pope Benedict XVI titled Ambrosini as Venerable a month later on 10 May after confirming that the teenager had lived a life of heroic virtue.