Teresa Maria della Croce (Manetti)

Teresa Adelaide Cesina Manetti, was born in Campi Bisenzio, in the then hamlet of San Martino, to Gaetano Manaetti (a poultry farmer) and Rosa Bigagli, on March 2, 1846.

At the age of three she lost her father. This event profoundly marked the life of the family, as well as the character of little Teresa, who would grow to be strong and strong-willed, as well as open and generous. Strength in the time of trial, from her experience of poverty, abandonment to Providence, the sense of sacrifice…: these were the attitudes that Teresa learned from an early age, especially thanks to the example and education from her mother, a strong woman of deep faith.

After a self-assured and lively adolescence, carried away even be how to dress and behave, at the age of 19 she irresistible felt God’s call and decided to follow the example of Teresa of Avila, who would appear to her in a vision.

In 1874 she began her first communal living together with two friends in the so-called ‘Conventino’, a small house under the Bisenzio embankment, and shortly after they became members of the Teresian ‘Third Order’, she taking the religious name of Teresa Mary of the Cross; in this period the young religious could count on the help and advice of Don Ernesto Jacopozzi, the chaplain of the church of San Martino, who followed her until her untimely death in 1894.

Teresa decided at the same time not to dedicate herself exclusively to a contemplative or ascetic life, but to open out her emerging Order, the «Congregation of the Carmelite Sisters of Saint Teresa», to the world, thus developing a remarkable charitable work, in particular aimed at the formation of young women, the care of abandoned girls and missionary activity. The success of the Order and its rapid expansion, first in Tuscany and then in the rest of Italy, made a new headquarters necessary and in a few years in 1887 the new Convent with adjoining church was built, always in San Martino. On July 12, 1888, Teresa and her companions were clothed in the Carmelite habit.

In 1904, the Congregation received approval from St. Pius X (Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, 1903-1914) and, also in those years, the first foundations abroad were opened, in Lebanon and Palestine.

In 1908 Mother Teresa Mary of the Cross was struck by an incurable disease that led to her death on April 23, 1910.

Her beatification ceremony was held on October 19, 1986.