Itala Mela was an Italian Roman Catholic theologian and mystic who was a lapsed Christian until a sudden conversion of faith in the 1920s and as a Benedictine oblate virgin assumed the name of "Maria della Trinita".
21 Facts About Itala Mela
1.
2.
Itala Mela penned a range of theological writings that focused on the Trinity, which she deemed was integral to the Christian faith.
3.
Itala Mela was proclaimed to be Venerable on 12 June 2014 after Pope Francis approved her life of heroic virtue.
4.
Itala Mela was beatified in La Spezia on 10 June 2017 and Cardinal Angelo Amato presided over the celebration on the pope's behalf; the miracle in question concerned the revival of an Italian newborn, whose body was in state of clinical brain death.
5.
Itala Mela was born on 28 August 1904 in La Spezia to Pasquino Mela and Luigia Bianchini; both were atheist teachers.
6.
Itala Mela spent her childhood in the care of her maternal grandparents from 1905 to 1915 as her parents worked and her grandparents prepared Mela for her First Communion and Confirmation; she made both on 9 May 1915 and 27 May 1915 respectively.
7.
Itala Mela became a member of FUCI in 1923, where she met future pope Giovanni Battista Montini and Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster at the meetings there; she met the priests Divo Barsotti and Agostino Gemelli.
8.
Itala Mela was the main friend of Angela Gotelli, a teacher of classic letters and a Roman Catholic partisan who was close to the political ideas of Aldo Moro.
9.
Itala Mela received her high school diploma at the liceo classico Lorenzo Costa of La Spezia with recognition of being a brilliant student and in 1922 was enrolled at the University of Genoa, where she later received a degree in letters in 1928 as well as in classical studies.
10.
Itala Mela experienced her first vision of God on 3 August 1928 as a beam of light at the tabernacle in a church of a seminary at Pontremoli, beginning a long stream of visions in her life.
11.
Itala Mela departed for Milan at this time, and chose as her confessor Adriano Bernareggi.
12.
Itala Mela's true calling as a Benedictine oblate came in 1929 and solidified to the point where she commenced her novitiate.
13.
Itala Mela presented an idea for a memorial to Pope Pius XII in 1941, and the pope accepted the Memorial of Mary of the Trinity.
14.
Itala Mela was clothed in the wedding dress of one of her pupils who had become a Carmelite, a dress that had been worn by her for the day of her vesting.
15.
Itala Mela's remains were later transferred to the La Spezia Cathedral's crypta in 1983.
16.
Itala Mela received the gift of the transverberation of the heart.
17.
Itala Mela's findings were typewritten by the nuns of the Benedictine Monastery of Santa Maria del Mare, Castellazzo, La Spezia.
18.
The Trinitarian indwelling is a spiritual experience proposed by Itala Mela to help the faithful live their lives in the light of the Trinity.
19.
Itala Mela lived its first experiences of trinitarian indwelling after having prayed the Office of the Hours, received the Eucharist during holy mass or having practiced an intense Eucharistic adoration.
20.
Itala Mela immolated herself, offering her joyful suffering and infirmity to God so that other people could experience the Trinitarian indwelling, for the forgiveness of their sins and their eternal salvation.
21.
Some of Itala Mela's writings were translated into Spanish by Manuel Garrido Bonano, OSB, who collaborated in the cause for beatification of Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer at the Diocesan Tribunal of Madrid and as promoter of justice in that of Sister Eusebia Palomino Yenes.