Agostina Livia Pietrantoni

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Agostina Pietrantoni (27 March 1864 – 13 November 1894) born Livia Pietrantoni, was an Italian religious sister of the Sisters of Divine Charity.^[1] Pietrantoni worked as a nurse in the Santo Spirito hospital in Rome where she tended to ill victims in a tuberculosis ward before a patient murdered her in 1894.^[2] Her canonisation was celebrated on 18 April 1999 in Saint Peter's Square.

Olivia or Livia Pietrantoni was born on 27 March 1864 in Pozzaglia Sabina, about 50 kilometres north-east of Rome, as the second of eleven children to the poor farmers Francesco Pietrantoni and Caterina Costantini.^[1] She received her Confirmation in 1868 and then made her First Communion just under a decade later in 1876.^[2]

Pietrantoni started work in 1871 and she worked doing manual labour for road construction and later in 1876 left for Tivoli with other adolescent seasonal workers during the winter months for the olive harvest.^[2] She refused offers of marriage – despite her mother's insistence – and so travelled to Rome with her priest uncle Matteo in January 1886 with the aim of entering consecrated life in order to pursue her vocation. W"hen she sent a letter of admission to their generalate in Rome, the Sisters of Divine Charity declined her request.^[3] Pietrantoni persisted in finding a place to pursue her call and a few months later was accepted into the congregation. She bid farewell to her parents and left for Rome once more where she joined the congregation at Via Santa Maria in Cosmedin on 23 March 1886. She assumed the religious name of Agostina upon her investiture on 13 August 1887.^[2]

Pietrantoni was sent to the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome as a nurse on 13 August 1887 and remained there until her death.^[1] While working in the tuberculosis ward she contracted the disease herself but recovered and so was sent to the ward herself in 1889 to tend to ill patients there.^[3] On one particular occasion she was attacked and beaten because she had seized a knife from a patient and it worried the other religious despite Pietrantoni's insistence that she was fine and would continue to work.

The male patient Giuseppe Romanelli began to harass her at this point; he even sent her death threats. On the evening of 12 November 1894 she was asked to take time off since the sisters worried for her; she refused. Romanelli attacked and stabbed her to death in the morning on 13 November 1894.^[3] Pietrantoni forgave her killer moments before she died to her wounds. Romanelli stabbed her in a dark corridor with three stabs at the shoulder and left arm and the jugular before a final stab in the chest. Her final words were: "Mother of mine: help me!" Professor Achille Ballori – who had once warned her about Romanelli – inspected her remains and observed that "Sister Agostina has allowed herself to be slaughtered like a lamb" and noted there were no contractions of either her nerves or heart. The funeral blocked the streets of Rome (thousands lined the streets and kneeled before the casket as it passed them) and a Messaggero report on 16 November stated that "never a more impressive spectacle was seen in Rome". Pietrantoni's remains were moved to the generalate on 3 February 1941 and then to her hometown on 14 November 2004.

Pietrantoni's spiritual writings were approved by theologians on 28 May 1941.^[4] The beatification process opened on 14 December 1945 under Pope Pius XII, while Pope Paul VI named her as venerable on 19 September 1968 and beatified her on 12 November 1972.^[3]

A miracle was investigated and then received validation from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on 19 March 1996. The medical board assented to this on 17 April 1997 as did theologians on 7 October 1997 and then the members of the Congregation on 20 January 1998. Pope John Paul II approved this miracle on 6 April 1998 and later canonised Pietrantoni on 18 April 1999.^[5]

Pietrantoni was named as the patron saint for nurses on 20 May 2003 after the Italian Episcopal Conference named her as such.^{[citation needed]}

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