Blessed Elena Aiello

Elena Emilia Aiello was born at Montalto Uffugo in Calabria in 1895 and grew up in an exemplary Christian household, losing her mother early. During an illness she consecrated her life to God by the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. After the First World War and the influenza epidemic she entered the Sisters of Charity of the Most Precious Blood at Nocera dei Pagani in 1920, but a badly treated illness left physical damage that forced her to leave. Home again, she asked the intercession of Saint Rita and recovered. From November 1921 mystical phenomena accompanied her until death, among them a sweat of blood and the stigmata, appearing particularly on the Fridays of Lent and on Good Friday.

Formed by this sharing in the Passion, she began on 17 January 1928, with one companion, a work for the least, above all for abandoned girls, which grew into the Congregation of the Minim Sisters of the Passion, approved by the Holy See in 1948. Her charism she summed up in a phrase she repeated almost like a litany: there is no love without suffering.