Saint BENEDICT MENNI

 

(al secolo Angelo Ercole)

Superior General of the Order.

Founder of the “Sisters Hospitallers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”.

Born in 1841 in Milan.

Died at Dinan (France) in 1914.

He received his hospitaller vocation while working as a volunteer at Milan’s railway station, and saw the Brothers of St John of God receiving the many war-wounded soldiers returning from the Battle of Magenta in 1859. He applied to join the Order, taking the name Brother Benedict.

One year after making his solemn profession he was summoned to Rome by the Superior General, Fr Giovanni Maria Alfieri, to work as his secretary and to complete his theological studies at the 'Collegio Romano', now the 'Pontifical Gregorian University'. He was ordained priest on 14 October 1866 in Rome, and celebrated his first Mass in the Church of St John Calibita on Tiber Island.

In 1867, aged only 25, the Superior General, who had noticed of the young Brother's talents and abilities, sent him to Spain to revive the Order. In Spain, facing all manner of harassment and danger, sacrifices and difficulties, even at the hands of the Church authorities, in the anti-clerical climate that reigned throughout Spain that was not in favour of his projects, he nevertheless founded many care centres in different towns to help people with mental and physical disabilities and children suffering from scrofula. He not only restored the Spanish Religious Provinces, but also the Portuguese and Mexican Provinces, founding 22 hospitals for the most neglected sick and suffering people, while recruiting new vocations to our Order.

In 1881 he founded the "Sisters Hospitallers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus" to take care of the mentally ill. Following the canonical foundation of the Congregation, Mother Maria Josefa Recio (1846-1883) was unanimously elected Superior General, but she died after being a brutally attacked and beaten by one of their mentally ill patients. In 2012 Pope Benedict XVI declared Mother María Josefa Venerable.

Fr Menni was appointed Apostolic Visitor of the Order, and at the General Chapter on 21 April 1911 Pope Pius X appointed him Superior General of the Order. He resigned the following year as a result of a slanderous campaign waged against him by a group of Brothers, that made it necessary to separate the two Hospitaller Religious families. By now Fr Menni was in poor health and was removed from the Sisters Hospitallers' house and sent to Dinan (France) where, after a long period of suffering and unable to move or feed himself, he left his earthly life and entered the heavenly life that he had so richly deserved.

His body rests in an urn in the chapel of the Sisters he founded in Ciempozuelos.

Beatified by Pope John Paul II on 23 June 1985.

Canonised by Pope John Paul II on 21 November 1999.

His liturgical Feast Day is 24 April.