Paola Elisabetta Cerioli
Italian nun (1816–1865)
Feast: 24 December (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Costanza Cerioli was born on 28 January 1816 and lived at Soncino until about eleven, then spent five years at a boarding school at Alzano, where in suffering and loneliness she learned to trust God. At her parents' wish she married, and her marriage was lived in loneliness and devotion.
All her children died young, and then she was widowed. She gave her means and strength to educating peasant children and orphans with no future, finding in the Lord the joys of a mother, and founded at Bergamo the Sisters and the Fathers and Brothers of the Holy Family.
The miracles
The Dicastery's biography does not describe the miracles approved in the cause.
Why that counted as sanctity
A mother who lost all her children and became a mother to orphans.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography: Paola Elisabetta Cerioli
- Wikidata Q447198 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Paola Elisabetta Cerioli (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.