Blessed Anna Maria Taigi

Wife and Mother
(1769–1837)

Blessed Anna Maria Taigi was born on May 29, 1769, in Siena, Tuscany. Her family moved to Rome when she was six, and there she grew up in poverty. In 1790 she married Domenico Taigi, a servant in a Roman noble household, a man of rough and difficult temperament. Together they had seven children, of whom four survived infancy. Their household was not wealthy, and Anna Maria bore the burdens of domestic life with heroic patience.

After a period of worldliness in her youth, Anna Maria underwent a profound conversion around the time of her marriage and entered the Third Order of the Most Holy Trinity. From that point forward her life was one of intense mysticism combined with the most ordinary domestic duties. She cooked, cleaned, nursed the sick, and cared for her family, while simultaneously being favored with extraordinary gifts of prayer, prophecy, and bilocation.

The most remarkable of her gifts was a mysterious sun which appeared before her eyes and in which she could see distant and future events, the state of souls, and the secrets of hearts. Cardinals, bishops, and even popes sought her counsel, and her gift of reading consciences was attested by numerous witnesses at her beatification process. Among those who venerated her was Pope Leo XII.

She bore severe physical sufferings for most of her adult life with extraordinary patience. She died on June 9, 1837, after a prolonged illness. Pope Pius X beatified her in 1920. Her cause for canonization continues. Her feast is celebrated on June 9.