Elisabetta Vendramini
Italian Franciscan tertiary (1790-1860)
Feast: 2 April (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Elisabetta Vendramini was born at Bassano del Grappa on 9 April 1790. Shortly before her wedding, at 27, she broke off her engagement and went to teach in an orphanage of Franciscan tertiaries, where she was repeatedly humiliated; she moved to Padua to work among abandoned children.
With a companion she opened a free school for abandoned children and cared for the old and sick, and began receiving young women under the name of Franciscan Elizabethans. From 1835 they multiplied, opening schools and caring for the outcast and the old. She died on 2 April 1860.
The miracles
The Dicastery's biography does not describe the miracles approved in the cause.
Why that counted as sanctity
A woman who gave up marriage to serve abandoned children and founded the Elizabethan Sisters.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography: Elisabetta Vendramini
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - beatification of 4 November 1990
- Wikidata Q3723268 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Elisabetta Vendramini (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 22 September 2026. Corrections welcome.