Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
October 24, 2001
Vatican to elevate married couple to rank of `blessed'
Cardinal: Parents of 4, Italian duo lived `holiness of a couple'
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — At the prodding of Pope John Paul II, the Vatican has found an "ordinary'' married couple to beatify and hold up as models of holiness for the whole Church.
Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, lawyer and homemaker, father and mother of four children, lived their married life in early 20th-century Rome. On Oct. 21, they will become the first couple in the history of the Church to be elevated together to the rank of "blessed.''
Three surviving children of the couple will witness the historic event in St. Peter's Square.
The beatification has special significance for Pope John Paul. In 1992, he asked officials in his saint-making congregation to turn their attention to lay people. In particular, he wondered why no married couple was on the Church's calendar of saints.
Almost all the people beatified and canonized by the Church over the centuries have been priests, nuns, monks, bishops, popes, hermits, missionaries or martyrs for the faith.
With Church leaders promoting saintliness as a vocation for all Catholics, they needed lay people in all walks of life as examples of holiness in action.
Two years after the pope's remarks, the paperwork for the sainthood causes of the Quattrocchi couple arrived at the Vatican. Saint-making officials insisted on treating the two causes as distinct.
But in the end, they found that Luigi and Maria truly lived "the holiness of a couple, in perfect communion of views, of feelings and of spirit,'' said Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the sainthood congregation.
Cardinal Saraiva, writing in the Vatican newspaper, emphasized what he saw as the highlights of the Quattrocchis' vocation as a married couple: their deep prayer life, their activity in Church associations, the "atmosphere of mutual affection between the parents and their children,'' and the fact that three of their four children became priests or nuns.
When Maria discovered she was pregnant unexpectedly for a fourth time, doctors told her there was a 99 percent chance she would die unless she aborted the baby. The couple said they could not do that; a daughter was born in 1914 and is still living. Maria herself lived another 51 years.
Faced with the risk of death, Maria Quattrocchi gave herself to "the mysterious and loving design of divine providence,'' Cardinal Saraiva said.
Catholics who want a closer look at how a "saintly'' couple lived their daily routine can go to other sources.
As detailed in new biographies, Maria and Luigi had an intense courtship, documented in love letters they wrote and saved. They adopted the habit of writing their most passionate thoughts in slightly broken English — in part to keep them private.
"I have put a kiss so warm as my love: the thought that you shall take it with your adored lips gives me a moment of happiness,'' wrote Luigi.
"I take your hands and put them on my face, on my heart, on my mouth, and I kiss them a million of times,'' wrote Maria.
They married in 1905 and had their first three children in the four years that followed. When she suspected a second pregnancy on the heels of the first, Maria was distraught and did not hide her feelings.
"I'd prefer anything to (another) pregnancy, because how would I take care of both children in the state I'm in?'' she wrote her husband, who was away.
But she did, and people described their household as a happy and noisy one, especially at mealtimes, when everyone seemed to want to talk at once. The couple put an emphasis on prayer, too, and had frequent visits from a priest.
Luigi and Maria were early admirers of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, but they became disillusioned by fascism after racial discrimination laws were adopted. Later, they frequently hosted and helped political dissidents and Jews sought by the fascist authorities.
Maria spoke English and French, read the classics from Dante to Shakespeare, and spent much of her time writing books on the role of the mother in education.
After 21 years of marriage, when Luigi was 46 and Maria was 41, the couple gave up sexual relations, at the suggestion of their spiritual adviser.
Biographers treat the point with great delicacy and say this was not something lived with ``fanaticism'' but as an expression of chastity that could open new avenues of spiritual growth.
Luigi died in 1951 at the age of 71. Maria cut back on her writing activity and, slowed by age and disease, devoted much of her final years to prayer. She died in 1965 at the age of 81.
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