Eustochia Smeralda Calafato
Italian saint
Feast: 20 January (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Smeralda Calafato was born in Messina on 25 March 1434, the fourth of six children of modest working people; her mother was a fervent admirer of the Franciscan Observant reform. Her family, above all her father, opposed her vocation, and she even tried to run away, until her father died suddenly in Sardinia in 1448.
As a Poor Clare, Sister Eustochia, she became abbess and worked with great ardour to restore the ancient discipline of religious life and the following of Christ on the model of St Francis. She died at the monastery of Montevergine on 29 January 1485, leaving a fervent community of about fifty sisters.
The miracles
The Dicastery's biography does not describe the miracles approved in the cause.
Why that counted as sanctity
A Poor Clare abbess who renewed the religious life in the spirit of St Francis.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography: Eustochia Smeralda Calafato
- Wikidata Q276019 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Eustochia Smeralda Calafato (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.