The story of the Francescane Missionarie di Di Gesù Bambino begins by pure Grace more than a century ago, in the late 1800s in L’Aquila, Abruzzo. A young lady of about twenty, Barbara Micarelli, falls ill and, just when all seems lost, miraculously recovers.
That unexpectedly reborn life is such an abundant and gratuitous wonder to her that she wishes, from that moment on, to turn it into a gift for others.
miraculously
Our founding mother
Sulmona, late 1800s: Barbara was born the second to the last of seven children, but it was in L’Aquila, where her family would soon move, that she took her first steps in understanding and embracing God‘s dream for her life.
Her desire to give up to the very end the years that the Lord miraculously still granted her to live after her recovery, prompted her to listen on the streets of L’Aquila to the cry of “human miseries” and with generosity devotes herself “to the good of the wretched, the orphaned, the abandoned.
Our roots
Our religious family has its roots in the intuition of a young girl from Abruzzo, Barbara Micarelli, who felt called to found an institute of sisters who, according to the Franciscan style, would work together in fraternity in and for the Church.
Thus began her journey together with her first companions, her sister Carmela and Caterina Vicentini, a small group of girls united in a common life in the service of the poor, in the city of L’Aquila.
