Saint Gemma Galgani 19C.

Saint Gemma Galgani was born on March 12, 1878, and she died on April 11, 1903. also known as Gemma of Lucca, was an Italian mystic, canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church in 1940. She has been called the “daughter of the Passion” because of her profound imitation of the Passion of Christ. She was a mystic who had the stigmata. The stigmata are the wounds of Christ. Typically, a person who gets the stigmata gets wounds that do not heal on their wrists, ankles, head, and side.  It is very hard to get the Stigmata. Very few people have had it. Do you know anyone who has had the Stigmata?

Saint Gemma Galgani Biography

Saint Gemma Galgani was born on March 12, 1878. She was the fifth of eight children. Her father was a prosperous pharmacist. On September 15, 1885, Saint Gemma Galani’s mother died of tuberculosis. Her father died of the same disease while studying for the priesthood. After her parents died, she was sent to a Catholic half-boarding school in Lucca run by the Oblates of the Holy Spirit. She excelled in French, math, and music, and received her first communion when she was 9.

At age 16, Galgani developed spinal meningitis, but recovered. She attributed her extraordinary cure to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the intercession of Saints Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows and Marguerite Marie Alacoque. Galgani had a particular devotion to the Sacred Heart. She refused two marriage proposals by the age of 19.

According to a biography by her spiritual director, Germano Ruoppolo, Galgani began to manifest the stigmata on 8 June 1899, at the age of 21. She stated that she had spoken with her guardian angel, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and other saints, especially Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. According to her testimonies, she sometimes received special messages from them about current or future events. With her health in decline, Ruoppolo directed her to pray for the disappearance of her stigmata; she did so, and the marks left.

She said, as is the case often, that while she had the stigmata, she refuted several attacks from the devil. Saint Gemma Galgani was frequently found in a state of ecstasy while she had the stigmata. She was also able to levitate: she claimed that on one occasion, when her arms were around the crucifix in her dining room and she was kissing the side wound of Jesus, she found herself raised from the floor.

Saint Gemma Galgani’s physician, Pietro Pfanner, who had known Saint Gemma Galgani since her childhood, examined her stigmata. In his opinion, the marks were signs of hysterical behaviour, and he suspected Gemma may have suffered from a form of neurosis. He examined Galgani and noted spots of blood on the palms of her hands, but when he ordered the blood to be wiped off with a wet towel, there was no wound. He concluded the phenomenon to be self-inflicted. On another occasion, Galgani’s foster mother observed a sewing needle on the floor next to her.

In early 1903, Saint Gemma Galgani was diagnosed with tuberculosis and went into a long and often painful decline with mystical phenomena. One of the religious nursing sisters who attended to her stated, “We have cared for a good many sick people, but we have never seen anything like this.”At the beginning of Holy Week 1903, her health quickly deteriorated, and by Good Friday, she was at the point of death, dying in a small room on April 11 1903, Holy Saturday.

Conclusion

After the Church examined her life, Galgani was beatified on 14 May 1933 and made Saint Gemma Galgani on May 2, 1940. Her relics are at the Sanctuary of Santa Gemma in Lucca, Italy. There is a bronze effigy of her atop her tomb. In 1985, her heart was enshrined in the Santuario de Santa Gema in Madrid, Spain. Gemma Galgani’s confessor, Germano Ruoppolo, wrote her biography. She was controversial, and some of her contemporaries thought of her highly others made fun of her and thought she was a fraud.