From the Ashes, New Flames

By the second half of the 18th century, religious life had been hollowed out by the continual interference of Catholic monarchs in the Order’s internal affairs. Joachim Smet, in his monumental history of the Order, writes “the frontal attack of the French Revolution, Napoleon, and the liberal governments left only ruins.”

He continues “The enemies of the Church failed to realize that they were robbing religious not only of their material possessions but also that pearl of great price for which they had sole their all: a life of intimacy with God in prayer in the goodly company of brothers. The destruction of their life of prayer in community was the severest deprivation religious suffered. Also, by being unjustly deprived of their right to exist as corporate bodies, religious could no longer live the life of evangelical poverty to which they were committed in conscience by the most solemn promises.”

The secretary of the Congregation of the State of Religious Orders, in a preliminary report to Pope Pius IX (1847) painted a dark picture of the state to which religious life had been reduced. Yet for the Carmelite Order, now on the point of extinction, this period saw an increasing number of its members being recognized by the Church as “blesseds.” In addition to Jane Scopelli, the 15th century Carmelite nun, in 1771, the Church honored Angelus Augustine Mazzinghi (1761), Aloysius Rabata (1841), Avertanus and Romaeus (1842), Louis Morbioli (1843), Jacobinus (1845), Frances d’Amboise (1863), Archangela Girlani (1864), John Soreth (1866), and Baptist of Mantua (1885).

Read more about Blessed Jane Scopelli here