Magdalene was born on March 1, 1774, into an ancient and prominent Veronese family. One of five children, her father was Marquis Ottavio di Canossa. Her mother, Teresa Szluha, a Hungarian countess.
In 1779 her father died in an accident.
Two years later her mother left Canossa palace to marry the Marquis Zanetti of Mantua.
In 1791 she spent time in a Carmelite monastery but discerned that this was not her vocation. She returned to her family life at Canossa Palace, and undertook the running the family"s large estate. In Verona Magdalene saw a city in which the poor suffered extreme poverty, only made worse by the social upheavals caused by the invasions of the French Revolutionary Army and the opposing forces of the Austrian Empire, which eventually gained control of her native city.
This situation provoked her desire to serve the needs of the unfortunate.
Using her inheritance, Magdalene began charitable work among the poor of the city. On April 1, 1808, she was given an abandoned monastery where she took in two poor girls from the slum of the San Zeno neighborhood of the city to care for them and provide them an education.
On the following May 7, she moved out of her ancestral palace and moved into the monastery, now called the Convent of Saint Joseph, where she was soon joined by other women, with whom she formed the The new congregation started to care for poor children and to serve in the city"s hospitals. As word of their work spread, they were requested to start new communities in other cities of the region.
Soon there were convents of the Canossian Sisters established in Venice (1812), Milan (1816), Bergamo 1820 and Trent (1824).
Magdalene drew up a Rule for the congregation, and it received formal approval by Pope Leo XII on December 23, 1828. To this end, she invited a Catholic priest, Francesco Luzzi, to open a small oratory adjacent to the Sisters" Convent of Saint Lucy in Venice. He opened this house on May 23, 1831.
In 1833, he was joined by two laymen, who later took over the work of the oratory when Luzzi left to become a Carmelite friar.
Foreign nearly a century, the men"s community consisted of only two or three lay brothers. They were given a religious habit in 1860 by the Patriarch of Venice and were given a Rule in 1897 by a subsequent patriarch.
By 1923, however, the Superior of the Oratory declared the impossibility of the community"s continuance, and placed the congregation into the hands of the patriarch. Death and veneration
Magdalene died in her native city on April 10, 1835, having seen the work of the Daughters spread out across the region and the establishment of the Sons.
She was beatified on December 8, 1941 by Pope Pius XII and was canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 2, 1988.
Her feast day is May 8. Today the Canossian Daughters of Charity have communities serving the poor and bearing witness to the Catholic faith on every continent of the world.
