ITALY, Pamela Fabiano •
On Sunday, 5 May, Sr Bernadete Maria Barbara Ganz (59), a member of the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary, died in Bonn, Germany. –
For the Italian Schoenstatt Family, particularly in Rome, the illness and death of Sr Bernadete caused great pain. Since 2017 she lived and worked in Rome as Superior of the house of the Sisters of Mary at the Cor Ecclesiae Shrine on the Via Aurelia Antica, where she served the Schoenstatt Family.
We remember her joyful attitude to service, her thoughtful and considerate welcome to the groups that came to the shrine for their activities, her commitment to speaking Italian with its thousand difficulties, and her incredible readiness to learn it well.
It was here in Rome that she suffered a serious stroke in January this year, and after treatment in the San Camilio Hospital in Rome she was transferred to a specialist clinic in Bonn, Germany. Unfortunately her condition deteriorated further until the heavenly Father called her home into his arms on Sunday morning.
The Italian Schoenstatt Family, together with the Schoenstatt Fathers and Diocesan Priests at the shrine in Belmonte, the Pilgrim Mother Apostles, the youth of Glurcap, and all whom she met in these years, unite with the Sisters of Mary in Rome, who cared for her with so much love in the hospital and accompanied her with discretion and sensitivity to Germany, to the place where she was cared for to the last. Sr Vera Lucia represented the Italian house community and Movement during her funeral on 9 May in the Adoration Church in Schoenstatt. Sr Bernadete Maria was buried in the cemetery of the Sisters of Mary on Mount Schoenstatt.
Original: Italian. Translation: Mary Cole, Manchester UK
