Read The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal Online
Authors: Hubert Wolf
The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal (39 page)
On the one hand, the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio weren’t really able to speak about sexuality, as it could play no part in a life dedicated to God—but on the other, they honored numerous saints whose mystical experiences were described using metaphors of love and eroticism. In this milieu, it may not have seemed at all strange to interpret what they felt during an exchange of intimacies as a sanctifying spiritual experience, rather than forbidden lust. During their hearings, many of the nuns brought up the fact that they felt ashamed and guilty about undressing for the doctor. This speaks for the likelihood of a cloistered upbringing leading to an immature form of sexuality. In the insular environment of Sant’Ambrogio (which was what sociologists would call a “total institution”)
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there was nothing to correct the worldview its nuns all shared. The confessors and Patrizi had completely failed in their duties as supervisory authorities, not least because their own piety followed the same popular trends as that of Sant’Ambrogio’s nuns.
Maria Luisa also admitted to the other endearments and “improper intimacies and practices” mentioned by numerous witnesses. She admitted all the “obscene acts” that had taken place during her tenure as novice mistress, which the court put to her
per singolo
(case by
case) from the transcripts of the novices’ hearings. She did, however, attempt to give at least some excuse for her behavior, by claiming that many of the novices had “shown her an exaggerated love.” They had fussed around her constantly, repeatedly embracing her, “one kissing her shoulder, another her breast, a third her arm.” At first, she had only reacted to these professions of love, but this had only caused them to escalate.
Maria Luisa also admitted to a custom she had introduced as novice mistress, whereby the night before they professed their vows, novices would sleep with her in her cell. On those nights, “two beds were made into one.” After the novices lay down, she pretended to have spiritual conversations—sometimes with God, sometimes with the Virgin—in which these heavenly figures gave her various commands. At this, the novices would begin kissing and caressing her. Abbess Maria Veronica had been well aware of this. She had even told her to “let them do it.” Once, she allegedly helped to push the beds together in Maria Luisa’s cell.
The investigating judges found the descriptions of sexual practices and Maria Luisa’s abuse so shocking that they omitted their own summary and a full commentary on this statement from the
Ristretto
. They twice referred the cardinals to the “shameless and obscene deeds,” “excesses and disgusting offences,” and “perverse precepts”—as they termed the homosexual acts—described in the transcripts of the hearings, which were attached to their report. The “Most Reverend Judges” were simply advised to read these statements for themselves.
JESUIT CONFESSORS AND THEIR VERY SPECIAL BLESSING
Now the court turned its attention to Maria Luisa’s father confessor. However, before she addressed her special relationship with Padre Peters, the former madre vicaria wanted to put it into context. In order to understand what had happened between Maria Luisa and Padre Peters, the inquisitors first had to hear about another of Sant’Ambrogio’s secrets: the Jesuit blessing. She revealed this to the Inquisition on June 26, 1860.
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In the old writings of the mother founder and her first companions … I read the following: so that the convent would not fall into the hands of the Holy Office again, as had happened to the mother founder, and to preserve the spirit of the institute that she had founded with advice and guidance from Padre Pignatelli, it turned out to be necessary always to have a Jesuit father confessor. (The mother founder had always had Jesuits as spiritual guides, and wanted to retain their spirit.) He must instill the Jesuit spirit into the nuns of our institute, and could thereby awaken extraordinary things.…
Agnese Firrao had sworn her community into a very special practice, saying: “My daughters, if you do this, you will preserve the institute. You know how much it costs—if you do not do it, you will be ruined.”
As proof of this, I can tell you what the late sisters Maria Crocifissa and Maria Francesca confided to me. They said Padres Marconi, Doz
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and Santinelli
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had instilled the spirit of the Mother, and God’s spirit, in Mother Maria Maddalena by a unique method. This spirit was then also instilled in Teresa Maddalena.
The spirit is instilled in the following way: the father confessor kisses the penitent on the forehead, the face and the lips; then he makes the sign of the cross on her throat with his tongue. Sometimes he puts his tongue into the penitent’s mouth and kisses her on the heart, on the side where we usually have the crucifix. Before these acts are begun, the penitent nun falls on her knees before the father confessor, who remains standing. He gives her the blessing, using the words that I have written down. Sometimes during the aforementioned blessing, the nun falls into ecstasies. Then the father confessor falls upon his knees and, supporting her with his right arm, he performs the acts I have just described.
I did not only find these acts and the words of the blessing in the Mother’s writings; the late nuns also explained them to me, just as I have described them now. They also performed these acts … I think that these things were done with great secrecy, since I did not notice the other nuns doing anything of this sort.
As with the sexual blessings, Maria Luisa didn’t hang back. She was keen to follow in the mother founder’s footsteps with this special
Jesuit blessing as well, and she enlisted Padre Peters to carry it out. Maria Luisa said that for around three years she had been fabricating heavenly letters. These encouraged the confessor to give her the extraordinary blessing, just as his Jesuit predecessors had given it to the previous heads of Sant’Ambrogio. She put these letters into the little casket, to which Peters believed he had the only key. Of course, Maria Luisa had a second key, as she admitted to the court.
In these letters I called on him to instill in me the spirit of the mother founder and the spirit of God, in the way I described above. And indeed I fell on my knees before Padre Peters and he dispensed the blessing. However, I did not go into ecstasies, but remained clearly composed. After the blessing, he would also kneel down; sometimes he carried out one of the above actions, sometimes another. Then he had to go, as the letters decreed. How many times this happened I cannot say, because it happened whenever the opportunity arose. As far as I remember, he only put his tongue in my mouth twice. This did not trouble my conscience, and I also never confessed it.
In Sant’Ambrogio, as the court learned, these “sensual and intimate acts” were known by the term
benedizione straordinaria
—an extraordinary blessing.
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Maria Luisa ascribed a fourfold effect to the blessing:
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“1. Insight; 2. Spiritual meditation; 3. Transformation; 4. Substantial communication.” She went on to say that this “substantial communication must take place seven times a year between the father confessor and the nun, and the other actions together with the blessing a total of 33 times within a year.”
But what was this special communication? Maria Luisa had also gleaned this information from the mother founder’s documents. There she read “that the
comunicazione sostanziale
takes place when the father confessor puts his tongue in the mouth of the penitent nun; this was like the laying on of hands that the apostles practiced with the disciples to instill in them the Holy Spirit.… Regarding the other actions, it was written that as the Lord gave potency to the water of Holy Baptism, and the oil of Confirmation, so He had embued all the above-named actions with the power to instill in the penitent nun the energies and the gifts described above.”
In these old writings from just after the convent was founded, Maria Luisa discovered the names of five Jesuits who had dispensed this extraordinary blessing, which was reserved for the abbesses of Sant’Ambrogio. Giuseppe Marconi, José Doz, Agustín Monzon,
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Brunelli,
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and Nicola Benedetti had upheld this special tradition by giving the blessing during confession. Maria Luisa’s list didn’t specifically include the Jesuit Padre Pignatelli, who was later canonized by Pius XII. But she made it clear that the spirit of the institute, which was passed on through the “substantial communication” of French kissing, originated with none other than Pignatelli—whatever this statement might mean. And although Maria Luisa was a mere vicaress, rather than the abbess, she was keen to perpetuate the tradition and add another Jesuit to the list: Padre Peters.
It wasn’t just the form but the supposed pretense of the
benedizione straordinaria
that went far beyond that of a blessing a priest might say during Mass, or following the absolution of sins in the confessional. Heavenly gifts of grace were conveyed in Sant’Ambrogio. This gift of divine mercy was even connected with the idea of “transformation.” This suggests that the being and substance of the nuns receiving this blessing were transfigured, just as a priest is at his ordination. The office of priest and bishop has been handed down through the Catholic Church since the time of the apostles, in an unbroken line of benedictions that preserves the Faith’s tradition. In Sant’Ambrogio’s extraordinary blessing, the hand of benediction was replaced with a French kiss. To the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio, the Jesuit blessing seemed more important than the consecration of an abbess, the ceremony through which the Church installs a mother superior. And this special blessing, received in an encounter with a man, then allowed the abbess to conduct the homosexual “purification” and “care” of the sisters in her charge. Here, of course, it was bodily fluids as well as the convent’s spirit that passed from one nun to another. The goal was an unbroken line of tradition from one abbess to the next. In a sense, the mother founder had devised an alternative, exclusively feminine model of succession.
But the women of Sant’Ambrogio couldn’t do without men entirely. Each new abbess required a new act of Jesuit inspiration: the spirit still had to be breathed into her through a French kiss with a padre from the Society of Jesus. This may have originated in an attempt by
individual Jesuits to protect the spirit of their own order (which was suppressed in 1773, and only permitted to resume in 1814), by preserving it in a community of Franciscan women. Firrao’s reform came during the Society of Jesus’s suppression. This would have made the Regulated Third Order Franciscan nuns
female Jesuits
in disguise—something that has never existed in the Church, and certainly couldn’t exist at this time. So the special protection the community of Sant’Ambrogio received from Jesuits and Jesuit pupils after 1814 comes as no surprise. Leo XII was as much a friend to the Jesuits as Pius IX, Patrizi, and Cardinal Reisach.
THE CONFESSOR’S AFFAIR WITH ALESSANDRA N
.
The heavenly letters and the Jesuit blessing’s intense physical contact, with all its erotic implications, gave Maria Luisa an unusual power over her confessor. Padre Peters was putty in her hands. The Madonna’s letters enabled her to guide him in whatever direction she pleased. She spoke about this to the Inquisition on June 26, 1860.
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As Padre Peters had realized my resistance to the extraordinary, he told me that a respected, leading Jesuit padre had been deceived by a penitent, which had left him badly humiliated. I was gripped by curiosity. Through one of the usual letters, I informed him that if that padre were to perform an act of humility, by telling me everything, he would have the comfort of being able to convert that soul. For a while he held back, but I pressed him, saying that this act of grace was dependent upon him telling his story. Finally he gave in. I found a letter in the above-mentioned casket; the letter explained all that had happened between the padre and his penitent. But I was not satisfied with this, and requested another letter from him, in which he told me the whole story from beginning to end.
He said he had been deceived as to the holiness of his penitent, Alessandra N., who lived in Rome in 1848 and 1849, and had been taken in by her stories of miracles. This made him bend to commit obscene acts with her, such as kissing, improper touching and embracing. She once fell on her knees and took his manhood in her
mouth, and finally they did shameful things together. And then he also explained how these last actions were carried out.
The name Alessandra N. must have caught the inquisitor’s attention: in the course of the informative process, he had stumbled upon the rumor that Peters had conducted a sexual relationship with a woman named Alessandra. The nuns had obviously been whispering about this affair behind their hands. Now he was hearing the juicy details from Maria Luisa; she had clearly paid close attention to everything Peters said in his letters to the Madonna.
In this letter he said that Alessandra N. had deceived many father confessors, and with her artfulness had stopped any of them being able to speak about it to the others. This Alessandra was still living in Rome some years ago, and came to the convent to visit one of my novices. I saw her, and she asked me if I gave confession to Padre Peters, but I marched her out. This Alessandra had a reputation as a pious woman, and used to dress all in black. But the curate of Sant’Adriano warned the people about her, so they might protect themselves from her.
The same letter also said that from this union of the flesh a natural effect had come to pass, but that this mark had disappeared again, in a manner unknown and undiscovered by them (namely Padre Peters and the penitent Alessandra).
Neither Maria Luisa’s testimony nor the letter clarified what exactly Padre Peters meant by a “natural effect” of intercourse. This could have been a pregnancy, which disappeared in an inexplicable fashion, or, if Alessandra had been a virgin at the time she slept with the Jesuit padre, a bloodstain on the sheets from where her hymen was broken. Maria Luisa went on: