Daily Saints – 2 May

Feast of Blessed Sandra Sabattini (Alessandra Sabattini)

Sandra Sabattini was born on 19 August 1961 at Riccione Hospital. She lived in Misano Adriatico with her devoutly Christian family, parents Giuseppe Sabattini and Agnese Bonini and brother Raffaele.

When she as 4, the little girl moved with her family to the rectory of the Parish of San Girolamo in Rimini, where her Uncle Giuseppe, her mother’s brother, was parish priest.

Sandra she was very active in the youth group. A pious girl, Sandra made her First Communion on 3 May 1970, was Confirmed on 16 April 1972.

At 12 she met Father Oreste Benzi, founder of the Pope John XXIII Community at one of the many meetings her uncle organised in the parish and joined the Associazione Comunita Papal Giovanni XXIII (Pope John XXIII Community).

In the summer of 1974 she took part in the summer holiday for teenagers at the Madonna delle Vette home in Canazei, together with young people with disabilities, many of them serious.

The experience left Sandra full of enthusiasm and when she returned home, she announced her decision to her mother: “We worked till we dropped, but these are people I’ll never leave”. From that point on, urban missions and helping those in need became a part of her life.

In 1980 she passed her high-school-leaving exam in Rimini and then enrolled at Bologna University to study medicine.

She never neglected her studies, getting excellent marks in every exam. One of her dreams was to become a medical missionary in Africa.

On the weekends and during the summer holidays of 1982 and 1983 she shared her life with the drug addicts in the Pope John XXIII Community rehabilitation centres.

The young people in rehabilitation therapy felt loved by her pure, disinterested love and gradually they rediscovered the meaning of their life.

Sandra spent her free time working with the poor, being consumed by the beatitude, ‘Blessed are the poor, the kingdom of Heaven is theirs’, volunteering in drug rehabilitation centers, and living poorer than the people she helped.

Everyday she went to the church to do her morning prayers and meditation before Jesus in the Eucharist. In the evening too, no matter how late she came home, she would spend an hour in prayer before Jesus.

She loved praying and meditating sitting on the floor, as a sign of humility and poverty. She was humble and reserved but had a beautiful voice and loved music.

While in university, Sandra met Guido and began dating. They both wanted to do missionary work abroad and were soon engaged to be married.

On Sunday 29 April at 9.30 in the morning she arrived there by car with her fiancé and a friend. Just as she got out of the car she, together with her friend Elio, were hit violently by another car. It was immediately clear she was in a serious condition. She fell into a coma and never recovered.

Three days later, on 2 May 1984, in a hospital in Bologna, she died when she was only 23 years old.

Her Cause for Canonization presents her as a model for living heroic Christian virtues in a normal, working life.

“A life lived without God is just a way of passing time, whether it’s boring or fun, time to be filled in while waiting for death.”

“Lord, I feel You are giving me a hand get closer to You. You’re giving me the strength to take a step forward. I really want to accept this but first I must conquer myself , my pride, my insincerity. I have no humility and I don’t want to acknowledge it, I let myself be terribly affected by others, I’m afraid of what they may think of me. I’m inconsistent, with a great desire to revolutionise the world but then I let it subjugate me. God, are You able to accept me as I am, full of limits, fears and hopes?”

“The truth is that we must learn in the faith to wait for God, and it is no small task to make your spirit take on this attitude. This waiting, this not making plans, this scanning the sky, this being silent, is the most interesting things we have to do. Then it’s time for the call to come, but we are blind if we believe we have brought about such miracles. The real miracle is that God calls upon us, such poor, miserable beings. Charity is the synthesis of contemplation and action, it is the point at which heaven joins earth, where human beings join with God.”