ANTONIA MARIA VERNA

Antonia Maria Verna was born in Pasquaro, a hamlet of Rivarolo, on 12 June 1773, into a deeply religious farming family, and on the same day she was baptized in the church of San Giacomo.

From a young age she devoted herself to children, the poor, and the sick; at the age of fifteen she made a vow of virginity and, around the age of twenty-five, moved to Rivarolo to give broader form to her charitable work.

Here she began the project of the Retreat, a women’s religious community devoted to care and education, and in the early years of the nineteenth century she also opened a school for girls, the original nucleus of the Institute of the Immaculate Conception.

Within the Retreat, approved after a long process marked by civil and ecclesiastical difficulties, Antonia and her companions dedicated themselves to the education of girls, catechism, and the care of poor sick people, becoming an important point of reference for Rivarolo.

There are no direct physical descriptions of Mother Antonia from life: the first portrait was painted only after her death, in 1839, and shows her as a sturdy woman with a severe and resolute face, marked by the features typical of peasant women of her time.

She died in Rivarolo on 25 December 1838, surrounded by the esteem of her fellow citizens, who preserved her memory over time.