Edvige Carboni

It is the spontaneity of the gesture of the talented, able, patient and steady embroiderer, that represents efficaciously the Edvige Carboni’s life; however, a life, not at all easy to be described; a noteworthy life, despite usual and linear; a life whose events, for us incredible, were for her completely normal, a life now under consideration of the Congregation for the causes of saints. 
 

The proofs of events documented in her Diary, and certified by people who saw through their eyes and heard through their ears something that they will never forget, let us sometimes speechless. Edvige is the proof of how Kierkegaard affirmed about faith: “Faith is the greatest passion of every men”. But Edvige goes beyond: she incarnates exactly what the spiritual tradition of Church indicates as heart, in the biblical sense of «profundity of the being» («in visceribus»: Gen 31, 33), where person decides or not for God.


Edvige Carboni, born on 3rd 1880 in Pozzomaggiore in the province of Sassari, was the second of five among brothers and sisters. Her parents, Maria Domenica and Giovanni Battista, immediately understood that she was special. Her mother told that when her child was born, the room lighted up thanks to a monstrance and that the following day a cross appeared on the newborn’s chest, increasing visible forever. Another extraordinary event happened some days later, when a swarm of white bees came into the house, stopping momentarily on the little Edvige’s face making her no evil. These signs were the origin of an amazing life.

Confirmed when she was four years old; she made autonomously the vow of chastity inspired by God when she was five years old; when she was eleven years old she made the first Communion. She never took part in a religious order, although it was a desire of her.


Her mother’s disease, looking after her little brothers and the works of weaving, embroidery and needlework that helped the family economy, let her at home with the joy of seeing everybody peaceful and been safe. She prayed so much and, often, after the chores, she went to the Church of Saint George Martyr of Pozzomaggiore.


In a little while, she had to face not only the worsening of the conditions of health of all family, but also the malevolent rumors of her village, envying of such a saint life that it seemed dubious.
Stigmata have already been appeared on her hands, feet and ribs saying nothing with nobody: only trusting in God, offering him everything, made her surpass these difficult moments.

Her life carried on always in a simple and modest way also when, come to Rome together with her old father and her sister who was a teacher, she had to conform to different and hard conditions of life, also because of the war that will break out later.


The mystical phenomena that happened to her are undeniable and proved: ubiquity, ecstasy, emanations of mysterious smells, visions of saints and diabolic persecutions that she faced with bravery and steady faith. Her figure was recognized and appreciated by Saint Pio from Pietralcina, the Monsignor Piovella, the Beatified Father Orione, the Servant of God Battista Manzella and Father Felice Cappello.

It is worth to remember someone among the numerous mysterious events that happened to her. When she was seventy years old, Edvige saw in front of her a woman who everybody knew that was dead, fallen in a gorge during a climbing on the Alps.

“I am dead until this point. I am into the Purgatory”, and she asked her to pray for her, in order to be able to go out soon from it. Another vision was that of Pol Vischin, a Russian soldier died during the war in October 1943, who showed himself in front of her while he was covered by flames.

He asked her to make celebrate some masses by the Monsignor Vitali and to communicate thinking of him in the Purgatory, saved from the Hell only thanks to the teaching of faith received when he was a child, having been a very sinner when he lived.

When Edvige did what was asked her, Pol showed himself again for thanking her, dressed with a white color, enveloped by a bright and hot light. During the World War, the ubiquities led her to the war places, in Russia like elsewhere, and she prayed intensely, in order to allow the terror, which she participated in, to finish soon.


Edvige died on 17th February 1952 and the process for her beatification has been carrying on since 1968. In addition to the extraordinary personality of the biography of the Servant of God, Edvige Carboni, her life, with simplicity, has benevolence, humility and spontaneity; all the virtues obtained from an incomparable faith and from a mysterious and unfathomable sense of work, dedication and hard work addressed generously towards other people and towards god. An existence of overmuch grace, that of Edvige, lived in the fullness of the God’s grace, but silent, kind, full of goodness, example of peace and love.