The Vatican has issued a decree recognizing the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Luigina Sinapi, declaring her “venerable.” The Italian woman was a lay mystic who had a vision of Jesus and the Virgin Mary and maintained a friendship with St. Pio of Pietrelcina, Italy, better known as Padre Pio.
Driven by her deep love for Jesus from an early age and claiming to have had visions of Mary, Jesus, and angels, her mother took her, in the mid-1920s, to San Giovanni Rotondo to meet Padre Pio, the saint recognized for bearing the stigmata on his hands, feet, and side. From that time, she maintained a close relationship with him, receiving his guidance and spiritual support throughout her life.
Sinapi was born Sept. 8, 1916, in Itri, Italy, and was baptized eight days later. According to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, at age 15 she felt the call to religious life and entered the Institute of the Pious Society of the Daughters of St. Paul in Rome. However, she had to leave the institute due to serious health problems.
The dicastery states that in November 1931, after the death of her parents, she was taken in by an aunt in Rome. To cover the costs of her stay, she began working as a domestic servant and later found employment at a post office and then at the Central Statistical Office.
Years later, Sinapi fell ill with cancer and was on the verge of death. However, on Aug. 15, 1935, the solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, she received the anointing of the sick and had a vision of Jesus and Mary, who miraculously healed her. From then on, she decided to live offering her sufferings for the evils of the world and for the salvation of priests and all souls.
During the Second World War she took refuge in her hometown and, upon returning to Rome, she lived in precarious conditions due to the hardships of the postwar period. From 1956 to 1970 she worked at the National Institute of Geophysics as secretary to the Venerable Servant of God Enrico Medi.
“She combined her work with an intense life of prayer, animated by a profound interior spirituality and characterized by various sufferings, accompanied by numerous mystical gifts,” the website of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints states.
By then, Sinapi was a Third Order Franciscan and, in 1954, she obtained dispensation to also enter the Third Order of the Children of Mary, to which her spiritual director belonged.
The Vatican website explains that at that time, Sinapi maintained a deep spiritual bond with St. Pio of Pietrelcina and enjoyed the trust of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII. In 1937, after a revelation from the Virgin at Tre Fontane in Rome, she predicted his election to the pontificate.
“She spent the last period of her life at home offering hospitality, listening, offering advice and spiritual consolation to all who came to her. She died of gastric cancer on April 17, 1978, with a well-attested reputation for holiness and [supernatural] signs,” the publication adds.
Supernatural gifts and acts of charity
The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints explains that Sinapi’s existential journey “was accompanied by numerous supernatural gifts such as precognition of events and situations, bilocation, discernment of spirits and, above all, mystical union with the Lord Jesus, lived in an atmosphere of modesty, humility, and service.”
In this context, many people, including priests, bishops, politicians, and parishioners, approached her seeking spiritual consolation. She helped many priests not only with prayer but also with material aid.
In addition to these supernatural manifestations, “she knew how to carry with extreme naturalness this burden of involuntary exceptionality, of love for God and for others, demonstrating, in the practice of virtues and in the capacity for sacrifice, total obedience to the Church and its representatives,” the Vatican website notes.
Devotions and spirituality
She had a deep devotion to saints such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Gemma Galgani, and St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus. Her spirituality, centered on the Eucharist and Mary, led her to help those in need, even in the midst of her own poverty.
By Diego López Marina
ACI Prensa Staff
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.