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Pope Francis declares Catholic sister killed in Satanic ritual a martyr

By Hannah Brockhaus for CNA

Sister Maria Laura Mainetti. (Image: Public domain)

Vatican City, Jun 19, 2020 / 12:40 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis declared Friday that Sister Maria Laura Mainetti, an Italian religious sister killed by three teenage girls in a Satanic sacrifice, was a martyr for the Catholic faith.

The 60-year-old Sister of the Cross was in 2000 stabbed to death by three teenage girls in a park in Chiavenna, Italy.

Mainetti’s killers were convicted and imprisoned.

The girls knew the religious sister because she had taught them catechism. They lured her to the park by claiming that one of them needed to talk, because she had been raped and impregnated and was considering an abortion.

The three girls originally said the murder was “for a game,” but later admitted they killed her as a demonic ritual.

In the park on the evening of June 6, 2000, the three girls made Mainetti kneel and shouted abuses at her. One girl beat the sister with a brick and another pushed her head repeatedly into a wall.

They took turns stabbing Mainetti 19 times with a kitchen knife. They had, according to Italian media reports, intended to stab her 18 times, six times each, to form by their violence the number 666.

Sr. Mainetti prayed throughout the attack and asked God to forgive the girls for their actions.

Mainetti was the superior of the Sisters of the Cross convent in Chiavenna, which was devoted to helping juvenile delinquents. The girls who killed Mainetti, however, had no prior history of crime or violence.

They confessed that they had originally planned to kill the parish priest, but decided that because he was larger, it would prove too difficult. Investigators said the girls’ notebooks were filled Satanic writings, and that they had made a blood oath some months earlier.

The killers have since been freed from prison, and have started families — changing their names and moving to large Italian cities, according to Corriere della Serra.

Their victim was born Teresina Elsa Mainetti in Colico, Italy on August 20, 1939. She was the youngest of ten children; her mother died in childbirth. She entered the Congregation of the Sisters of the Cross at 18 years old.

She dedicated her life to children, young people, and families in the towns of Vasto, Rome, and Parma before moving to Chiavenna in 1984.

Mainetti was well known in her small town for her social and charitable commitment to dispossessed youth and poor people.

In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI praised Mainetti, who, he said, “with a total giving of self, sacrificed her life while praying for those who were attacking her.”

Pope Francis also advanced June 19 the causes of four other men and women on the path to sainthood.

He approved miracles attributed to the causes of three Venerable Servants of God, who can now be beatified: Argentinian Bishop Mamerto Esquiú of the Order of Friars Minor (1826-1883); German Fr. Francis Mary of the Cross Jordan, founder of the Society of the Divine Savior (1848-1918); and Venezuelan layman and doctor Jose Gregorio Hernandez Cisneros (1864-1919).

The pope also declared the heroic virtue of Servant of God Maria de Jesus Elizondo Garcia, superior general of the Congregation of the Catechist Missionaries of the Poor. She was born in Durango, Mexico in 1908 and died in Monterrey on December 8, 1966.


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1 Comment

  1. The Lindisfarne Gospels- Stolen and sold by the thugs of Henry VIII.
    I contacted The British Library regarding ownership of The Lindisfarne Gospels and the possibility of them being to St. Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle upon Tyne.
    I also asked them for information as to what happen with the considerable sums of money that they charged for people to view them when they were on loan to Palace Green Library, Durham during 2013.
    The reply is attached and below;
    19th February 2015.
    Thank you for your correspondence. As you pointed out, the Lindisfarne Gospels were once in the possession of Durham Cathedral Priory, according to Symeon of Durham, who refers to them in his twelfth-century ‘Tract on the Origins and Progress of this the Church of Durham.’
    After this period there is very little information on how or when the Lindisfarne Gospels left Durham Cathedral Priory. Lawrence Nowell, an antiquary and lexicographer, is known to have consulted the Lindisfarne Gospels in the 1560s, but he is not believed to have visited Durham.
    The name Thomas Turner also appears in the codex, and his annotations have been dated to the early sixteenth century.
    The sixteenth-century antiquary Thomas Bowyer (d.1569/70) may also have possessed the manuscript; by 1605, it was in the possession of his son, Robert Bowyer (b. c. 1560, d. 1621), a parliamentary official and politician, who inscribed his signature on the verso page of the second leaf of the manuscript.
    In the first few decades of the seventeenth century Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (b. 1571, d. 1631) 1st baronet, antiquary and politician, acquired the manuscript.
    It was then passed on to his son, Sir Thomas Cotton (b. 1594, d. 1662), and grandson, Sir John Cotton (b. 1621, d.1702).
    The Cotton collection, including the Lindisfarne Gospels, was bequeathed to the nation ‘for Publick Use and Advantage’ by Sir John Cotton at his death in 1702.
    When the British Museum was established in 1753, these manuscripts formed one of the foundation collections of the Museum.
    The library of the Museum became the British Library in 1973. As you note, the Gospels were recently loaned to Palace Green Library, Durham, for an exhibition, and the accompanying book Richard Gameson, From holy Island to Durham:
    The Contexts and Meanings of The Lindisfarne Gospels (2013) contains an excellent analysis of the manuscript’s history.
    The Library does not have details of the funding for that exhibition.
    Regards Mark Reaveley Customer Services British Library.
    Since I raised this issue about the Lindisfarne Gospels being returned to Roman Catholic care takers as they were written by Roman Catholics at Lindisfarne by St Aidfrith and I am in no hesitation that our wonderful St. Bede would have contributed to the translations as he was the greatest translator, scholar alive at that period and lived at St. Paul’s Monastery at Jarrow and he would have been about 26 years old then and Lindisfarne and St. Paul’s would have had a daily communication along with St. Peter’s Abbey in Wearmouth as they were a short boat trip from each other on the same East Coast of England.
    I have had letters of reply and support for my quest from His Holiness, Pope Francis, His Eminence Cardinal, Vincent Nichols, His Excellency, Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Antonio Mennini and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.
    As one may note from the reply from the British Library the Gospels of Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ have been bandied about from pillar to post by God knows who since the Reformation and now being used as a money making venture as over 100,000 people had to pay over £8 per person to view them at Durham this meant that people who were on low pay with a couple of kids or unemployed or pensioners could not afford to view one of the greatest wonders of the world and the source and lifeblood of our civilization.
    The Lindisfarne Gospels were written in the North East of England and should be returned there into Roman Catholic safekeeping Now!
    By Francis Joseph Dougan

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