Antonietta Giugliano

An American Inheritance Given to the Poor of Naples

Antonietta Giugliano was born in New York City on July 11, 1909, to Italian emigrants from Afragola, near Naples. Her mother died when she was a small child, and around 1915 her father brought the family back to Afragola, where she was raised and educated. On her father’s death in 1929 she inherited considerable means, the fortune of an emigrant family made in America, and placed it at the service of the poor.

The decisive encounter of her life came on November 29, 1930, when she met Father Sosio Del Prete, a Franciscan friar who is today also Venerable, under whose direction she was formed in Franciscan spirituality. In 1935 the two initiated the Institute of the Piccole Ancelle di Cristo Re, the Little Handmaids of Christ the King, at Afragola, answering the social emergencies of the Neapolitan hinterland: shelter and care for abandoned elderly people and schooling for the children of poor and working families. She received the habit on October 20, 1935, as Sister Antonietta of Jesus.

After Del Prete’s death in 1952 she governed and expanded the work alone, through moral and physical sufferings that, in the words of the Vatican profile of her life, perfected her humility and fortitude.

Diagnosed with cancer in the spring of 1960, she died on June 8, 1960, surrounded by a widespread reputation for holiness. Her cause opened in 2006, and on December 21, 2018, Pope Francis authorized the decree recognizing her heroic virtues, making this New York-born foundress Venerable.

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