Blessed Maria-Assunta Pallotta died exactly a hundred years ago. Born at Force, near Ascoli-Piceno in 1878, she joined the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in 1898.

In 1904, four years after the martyrdom of seven sisters of the same congregation in China (canonised by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 2000), she left as a missionary to the same country.

Pope Pius X blessed her and her fellow missionaries before they left Rome. In China she was entrusted with the care of the poor orphans.

But she died of typhus only a few months later on April 7, 1905, at the age of 27. Pope Pius XII declared her Blessed on November 7, 1954.

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