Paola Renata is a small flower that has blossomed in an atheist family. Her short life was full of great contrasts which she, supported by the grace of God, was able to overcome until she reached the highest peaks of Christian perfection.

 

She was born in Montefalcone Appennino (Ascoli Piceno, Italy) on February 21, 1908 and was baptized without her family’s knowledge, in June of the same year. She had never heard about God in her childhood. He learned the first elements of the Catechism at the age of eleven, when, for reasons of study, she moved to Fermo and was entrusted under the care of a very Christian family.

 

In this new environment, Paola Renata opened herself to the action of Grace and, after the first Communion received secretly from the Archbishop of Fermo, she felt the irresistible desire to become a saint.

 

St. Therese of the Child Jesus became her guide and example. Inexhaustible source of light for her was the book "Story of a Soul", which she read shortly after her first communion and continued her meditation until her death. She was immediately so drawn to this life that she began to imitate it until it became a perfect imitator and communicate spiritually with the Saint.

 

To be really able to become a true imitator of her spiritual sister, she made a trip to Rome in May 1927, where, like St. Therese, she went to pray in the Colosseum, bending her knees on that soil bathed by the blood of so many Martyrs and ended l her brief Roman sojourn with a visit to the Holy Father. She came out moved and transformed! Her bright face seemed to be of a creature that is not from this earth. To a friend who went to meet her to greet her, she said: “Now everything is done!”

 

Her daily bread was Holy Communion which she never left even at the cost of great sacrifices. She should have avoided the cold weather because of her liver disease, but instead, even in winter, she used to get up on time at five in the morning and sometimes waited a long time in front of the church door.

 

At 16 she was elected diocesan secretary of Catholic Action. She fulfilled this assignment between sacrifices and contrasts. No one had noticed her activities in her family: she prepared minutes of the group’s meetings, did promptly the correspondence, worked out the scheduled programs late at night, when everyone was asleep and sacrificed her afternoon rest during summer season. She did all this with intimate joy, having well understood the importance of the group and the need of it for the youth. He loved all the members of the Catholic Action dearly and worked indiscriminately for everyone. She was eager to do and to give more and more; It was a happiness for her to contribute to the formation of the young women, therefore she enjoyed every spiritual retreat and every conference. She had respect and veneration for the leaders.

 

After graduating from primary school at 17, she taught the professional schools of Fermo for two years, pouring the perfume of her virtues on the students and leaving an indelible memory in each of them.

 

On 18 August 1927 she contracted typhus which, in the beginning, appeared in benign forms; she, on the other hand, knew that she was going to die, since Saint Therese had revealed it to her the year before. She was therefore preparing for divine embrace, trying to beautify her soul more every day. She was serene and peaceful in the painful 25-day illness.

 

Saint Therese came to support her in the last few struggles. Her face suddenly turned brilliant and exclaims: "You at the age of 24, I at 19!" as if to signify that Heaven had preferred her most, calling her to enjoy eternal happiness at a younger age. She died on September 11, 1927, bent on one side like to that of her spiritual sister. The corpse immediately took on a celestial appearance; the whole town poured into her room to ask for her intercession and they brought with them objects to be touched to her body. From the sky, she immediately poured a shower of roses on her loved ones and friends.

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Her Cause is under the General Postulation of the OAD and she was declared Venerable by Saint John Paul II on April 2, 1993.