Description

St Gemma Healing Oil (Patron for Loss of Parents)

St Gemma Patron Loss Maria Gemma Umberta Galgani (12 March 1878 – 11 April 1903), also known as Saint Gemma of Lucca, an Italian mystic, venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church since 1940. She called the “Daughter of the Passion” because of her profound imitation of the Passion of Christ. She especially venerated in the Congregation of the Passion (Passionists).

Gemma Umberta Maria Galgani born on 12 March 1878, in the hamlet of Camigliano in the provincial town of Capannori. Gemma the fifth of eight children; her father, Enrico Galgani, a prosperous pharmacist.

Soon after Galgani’s birth, the family relocated north from Camigliano to a large new home in the Tuscan city of Lucca in a move which undertaken to facilitate an improvement in the children’s education. Gemma’s mother, Aurelia Galgani, contracted tuberculosis. Because of this hardship, Gemma placed in a private nursery school run by Elena and Ersilia Vallini when she two-and-a-half years old.

Several members of the Galgani family died during this period. Their firstborn child, Carlo, and Gemma’s little sister Giulia died at an early age. On 17 September 1885 Aurelia Galgani died from tuberculosis, which she had suffered from for five years, and Gemma’s beloved brother Gino died from the same disease while studying for the priesthood.