Magdalen (not to be confused with Mary Magdalen) knew only loss and rejection from an early age. Her father died when she was five and her mother married again and abandoned her and her four brothers. After a serious illness when she was 15, she declared that she intended to become a nun, to the horror of her relatives. But an attempt to try her vocation with the Carmelites failed as she felt she could not do what she wanted which was to serve Jesus in the poor as a member of an enclosed order.

Encouraged by her spiritual director she did not give up. She gradually increased her work with other people, working in hospitals, visiting the sick, giving alms and instructing parishioners in the catechism. As time went on she formed a new religious congregation. She wrote a first rule for what became known as ‘The Congregation of the Daughters of Charity’ or the ‘Canossian Sisters of Charity’. Within 20 years she had houses in many cities in northern Italy. Her inspiration was the gospel and she described religious life as ‘the gospel translated into practice’.

She was canonized a saint in 1988. Her congregation continues her work in 21 countries around the world, carried out by some four thousand sisters.