St Gemma Galgani was an Italian saint and mystic who received the stigmata (the wounds of our Lord). She dedicated herself to God and to prayer and suffered greatly in her short life, dying at age 25. She is known as the Flower of Lucca and the Daughter of Passion.
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What Is Saint Gemma the patron saint of?
St Gemma Galgani was an Italian saint and mystic who received the stigmata (the wounds of our Lord). She dedicated herself to God and to prayer and suffered greatly in her short life, dying at age 25. She is known as the Flower of Lucca and the Daughter of Passion.
Pray this novena for purity, for healing from back pain, headaches, and the loss of parents.
Gemma from an early age was dedicated to God through prayer.
She attended a school run by the Sisters of St Zita, but her poor health caused her to stop attending.
God blessed Gemma with mystical experiences, but many were skeptical of them and cast aspersions on her. She offered this contradiction and ill will to our Lord.
Her father died when she was 19 years old, and she bore the brunt of responsibility to rear her seven siblings.
As a young woman, multiple men proposed to her, but she refused them, desiring only to be with our Lord.
Gemma got meningitis and felt tempted to evil by Satan; she asked for the intercession of Gabriel Possenti, a Passionist seminarian now known as St Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. She was miraculously cured.
Desiring to enter religious life, Gemma sought entrance to the convent, but her chronically poor health caused her applications to be denied.
At 21 years of age, Christ gave her the stigmata, and she bled each Thursday evening from her hands, her feet, and her heart.
The wounds would remain for a day or two, then subside, leaving white marks in their place. Eventually Gemma’s spiritual director, Fr Germanaus Ruoppolo, counseled her to pray for reprieve from the wounds, due to her very poor health.
Christ granted her prayers, but the white marks over her wounds remained til she died.
In 1903, Gemma contracted tuberculosis and died on Holy Saturday. She was 25 years old.
St Gemma Galgani was beatified on May 14, 1933 by Pope Pius XI and canonized on May 2, 1940 by Pope Pius XII.
Saint Gemma is the patron saint of Students, Pharmacists, Paratroopers and Parachutists, loss of parents, those suffering back injury or back pain, those suffering from headaches/migraines, those struggling with temptations to impurity and those seeking purity of heart.