Sister Margherita Demaria (1887 – 1964) was Allamano’s first and closest collaborator in the direction and formation of the Consolata Missionary Sisters, from 1913. We can define her as Allamano’s daughter and collaborator.
She entered the Institute on 2 October 1910, the year of its foundation, accepted directly by Allamano, and made her religious profession on 5 April 1913. From the following May, at the age of 26, she was placed by the Founder as his vicar for the care of the community of the Mother House, a post she held for a short time, because at the end of the year she was put in charge of the group of the first missionaries who left for Kenya. For 34 years she worked in Africa, first in Kenya, then in Tanzania and Mozambique covering positions of responsibility. From 1947 to 1958 she was Superior General of the Institute. After a few years, spent in Rome as superior of the community, she retired to Turin, where she died on 8 December 1964.
We present a brief profile of this interesting figure, who is among the roots of our Institutes who were in direct contact with the Founder.
Mother Margaret Demaria
From the book: “Il tesoro del nostro carisma”, Nepi, 2023, pp. 128-137.
Gleaning from the various writings and the countless testimonies of Mother Margaret, we now want to look at her as the milestone of our Religious Family of Consolata Missionary Sisters, whom we can define as Allamano’s true daughter and collaborator.
Mother Margaret Demaria was born in Dronero (Cuneo) on May 13, 1887. She entered the Institute on October 2, 1910, the year of its foundation. She made her religious vestition on June 1, 1911, and her religious profession on April 5, 1913. She was Superior of the Motherhouse from 18 May 1913 to 3 November 1913, the date of her first departure for the Missions. She was Superior of the Sisters who left for Kenya from 1913 to 1927. Later, when the Apostolic Prefecture of Meru was created, she was elected Delegate Superior of Meru (1927-1932). From 1932 to 1935 she was appointed Delegate Superior of Niassa, and finally Delegate Superior of Iringa (1935 – 1947).
After 34 years of mission work, she returned to Italy for the first General Chapter of the Institute and was elected Superior General (1947-1958). From 1958 she worked for 6 years as Superior of the Bethany House in Rome. Struck by a serious illness, on 6 November 1964, she was transferred to the Generalate in Grugliasco, where she died on 8 December 1964.
Mother Margaret was tirelessly active, always directed by pure intention, animated by an uncommon spirit of sacrifice and generous service. Her life was also steeped in suffering, trials, pains, battles. Her smile, so easy to appear on her lips, her vivacity and her wit often veiled from the eyes of others her fatigue, efforts, weariness, and pains.
Mother Margaret was such a rich, dear, pleasant, and singular personality: she struck immediately and conquered quickly, to lead only to good, to enthuse even for the least attractive things, duties or offices, to help and encourage. She was extremely sensitive and kind. Her eye looked deeply and grasped with ready intuition even the nuances of someone else’s concern, of a suffering, of a joy. Nothing escaped her. And nothing and no one she forgot. Not even someone else’s date or her own, for a wish, a thanksgiving, a prayer to God.
Throughout her life – a singular exception – she held the executive office of superior, but with detachment, despite having the innate gifts and with a vivid sense of her duties. She was always committed to sacrificing herself for everyone, welcoming everyone, helping everyone in the most varied ways: always maternal and always strong in supporting those in difficulties and pains. When the weight of the crosses – she was Superior General – pressed on her heart and made her weep, without a word of complaint, she would rush to the Tabernacle, and after a long time, she would return to her work redone, serene, ready for anything.
Throughout her life, Mother Margaret combined prayer with love, action, sacrifice, and silence. And the most distinct and visible virtues in her, were prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice, sincerity, purity, charity and zeal, generosity, the spirit of faith and confidence. And this spirit of confidence blossomed beautifully and splendidly in the quiet abandonment to the Will of God in the last months of her life. She asked nothing about her illness; no preference expressed; no cure refused; no questions asked; no desire manifested. “As God disposes, it is fine, as the doctor prescribes, let it be done, as you wish I desire it too.” Mother Margaret’s will was now fused, lost in that of God, and the latter saw it clearly and promptly where it may be. She was an expert in always hiding and concealing her suffering out of humility and fortitude [1].
3.3.1. Her Relationship with the Founder
Mother Margaret’s relationship with the Founder was one of filial attachment and tireless fidelity. Father Founder had unlimited trust in her and not only guided her but consulted her. When he could not consult her verbally, he wrote to her. In fact, we have precious messages that testify to his paternal relationship. After putting her in charge of the Sisters, Father Founder, in a letter dated May 16, 1914, wrote to her:
“I have received your beautiful letter, and I thank you for it, especially enjoying the full sincerity and minute way you write to me. It is all about the good, and you should not be afraid to make me feel sorry for it. It would be more painful if, in order not to upset me, you had hidden something from me. We all want the common good and the good of all. The news you give me are quite good and not different from what I expected. As you were in the Mother House, so you are in the Mission, with some increase in human misery because of the climate, the diversity of life and the weakening of fervour. Things that with God’s grace will disappear. Have great patience, encouraging, consoling, and always correcting in a maternal way.”[2]
“As I have already written to you, I am not worried about certain miseries; on the contrary, I was waiting for them. But they will pass away by the grace of God. It is impossible that people who made sacrifices to come and save souls, do not shake themselves after the first vengeance of the devil and rise to new energy to fight him. Give courage to yourself and to all of them. They are young, easily discouraged, but good will is in all of them and the Lord will help them.”[3]
“I am sending you the letter to read to the Sisters. It will seem a little severe to you; however, read it all to all. I thought of it and meditated on it at the feet of the Most Holy Consolata. And take courage in the Lord, and He will sustain you bodily and spiritually, as I pray to Him. Always write everything down as you see, and be quiet…”[4]
We could go on, but there are twenty-eight letters!
Allamano took care of the formation of this daughter of his so that she could faithfully transmit this charismatic identity. His letters to M. Margaret are full of exhortations, advice, encouragements, clarifications regarding her role as Superior among the first Sisters, still in need of human and spiritual formation. She herself collected some of the expressions of the Founder so dear to her, we will mention only a few:
“The whole truth is always the best consolation for those who desire the good and thus know things as they are…” [5].
“Continue with charity and long-suffering to sustain them; not neglecting to admonish and correct them until they are up to task of good missionaries…”).[6]
“Cheer up!… I bless you in the important task that the Lord has entrusted to you, He will help you spiritually and physically, as I always pray to Him, so that you may put a solid foundation to the good things that our present and future Sisters will do. […] I bless you at the feet of our Patroness: always prove yourselves worthy of the name you bear.”[7]
“Positions shape people if they have the ability and the will; You guide them and inform them of everything. Ensure that each one of them releases all her capacity in her task; This is how we will see formation for the future.”[8]
“For individual offices, the focus is not on seniority, but on suitability…”[9]
She was one of the first Sisters and drew from the Founder that fervent missionary spirit that then informed her whole life. She never strayed from his teachings and directions, even in the hardest, difficult, and most disconcerting times. This spirit she was able to pass on to her daughters at home and abroad.
“Her role was, from beginning to end, that of mother and guide, a tender, caring, understanding mother, and a courageous and fearless guide.”[10]
Mother Margaret was the strong woman of Sacred Scriptures, whose opposite qualities were well reunited: “Vigorous and strong and maternally good and tender; understanding and humane with her neighbour as she was inflexible with herself…; all zeal for souls, she was united to God and alive in His presence.”[11]
These words are echoed by those of the Founder who, in his letters of June 27 and November 4, 1914, had written to her:
“Continue in your method, which I think is right… Continue in a gentle and firm manner.”[12]
The Founder fixed his gaze on her to entrust her with this charismatic project to be carried out because of the profound union of mind and heart with her missionary ideal and her search for the “Dio solo!” and his Glory. On the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the Institute, she writes:
“In the intention of the Founder, his desire was to form his daughters more directly in that missionary spirit with which he had so inflamed his own heart… Thus, choosing a Sister from among the first ones to represent him, he reserved to himself personally the care of instructing and forming his daughters…»[13].
Leafing through the notes of Mother Maria degli Angeli Vassallo on the first years of the Institute’s life, one can see important hints in which one perceives that the Founder had full confidence in her. In fact, he placed her as the leader of the initial group, first at home and then in the Mission.
Here are some excerpts from those notes:
* On September 30, 1912, 8 novices went to Via Circonvallazione to replace the Gaetanine Sisters who had served with the IMC Fathers until then…. “The first eight Sisters called by obedience to lend their help in the House of the Missionaries were: Sister Margaret as Superior (she was a novice), Sister Paulina, Sister Candida, Sister Philomena, Sister Magdalene, Sister Lucy, Sister Catherine and Sister Carolina.”
* On December 5, 1912 – the Community moved to settle in Via Circonvallazione 310, – today the Mother House – but left at the “Consolatina” a group of 10 novices who were destined for the first departures for Africa under the charge of Sister Margaret as superior. In the calm of the Consolatina they had to attend solely and intensively to preparing for missionary life.
* On April 5, 1913, the first 11 Novices made their temporary vows, which were made with an oath for 5 years. “Among those who had the good fortune to see that most happy day, who can forget the emotion felt at that moment when Sister Margaret was invited for the first time by our Ven. Father to go forward and pronounce her vows?”
* On May 11 of the same year, as a small community of professed Consolata Missionary Sisters was established, Mother Celestina Bianco left our Institute. It was the day of Pentecost. Around three o’clock, two Josephine Sisters came to pick her up and we found ourselves alone waiting for our Father Founder to give us another Superior. We did not yet know what it would happen, nor did we try to inquire into it, as we were quite willing to accept cordially and with love who would be called to such an office. We were in the church singing the solemn Tantum Ergo in music when we heard our Father enter the house and call Sister Margaret with his eardrum. If before we tried to keep ourselves indifferent to the choice of the elect, nothing now prevented us from saying the most heartfelt Deo gratias toJesus in the Blessed Sacrament, who was about to bless us, with the choice of Sister Margaret… certain that after the Eucharistic blessing our Venerable Father would present her to us as our Superior[14].
There is yet another important and significant moment in the life of M. Margaret and it is the return from Kenya, desired by the Founder, and the meeting with him in 1922.What we know about these conversations, which took place between September 1922 and February 1923, is truly little. In the Historical Notes we read that M. Margaret’s personal notebooks are silent about this period of her stay in Italy. We do, however, have few notes which, as suggested by the title, Clarifications on the Rule and Details on the Intentions of Ven. Father Founder – October 1922[15] refer to this historic meeting.
These notes reveal the Founder’s commitment to study with his daughter any adjustments or additions to be made to the Constitutions and the Directory.
There are also other writings relating to this meeting written later. Among these, it is worth mentioning the testimony of M. Margaret addressed in 1956 to Fr. G. Fissore, Postulator General of the IMC. This text highlights and testifies to the Founder’s desire to know the real situation of the Missionaries in Kenya and to give a concrete, clear and stable arrangement to the Consolata Missionary Sisters both in the the organizational and in the the economic-administrative part.
Here’s a significant passage:
“… [Allamano was] obliged, a few years after our foundation, to send us to Africa in 1913 and unable to go to Africa to see in person our situation and the setting up of our missionary work, the Founder called me to Italy in mid-1922, to find out precisely how we were in the missions… During the time I was in Italy, our Father assured me several times that before his death he would leave everything in order.”[16]
M. Margaret loved Fr. Founder as a true daughter and did everything, with the Sisters entrusted to her, so that they would all be nourished by that spirit of missionary holiness that radiated from the whole person and life of Allamano. The Founder, in turn, esteemed and appreciated her very much.
The meeting in 1922 that she herself describes, vibrates with these mutual feelings of esteem and affection:
“And from the Shrine I passed into the house of the “Convitto”, where, trembling with emotion, I waited for our Most Venerable Father… He was not long in coming and went down the stairs. I could not resist waiting for him in the parlour, but I moved to meet him on the porch. I fell at his feet, kissed his hand, and my eyes filled with tears. With his lively, penetrating, affectionate eye, he looked at me well in the face, then said to me: ‘Yes, yes, it is still you, it is always you.’”[17]
On Mother Margaret’s return to Kenya, the Founder wrote to the Sisters on February 4, 1923:
“I send you back the Superior, Sister Margaret, although I need her help in the Mother House. I know you value and love her, and she deserves it. I do not want to deprive you of so much comfort to proceed on the path that you well lead…. Listen to her and obey her, also to console her in the heavy burden she bears…”).[18]
3.3.2. Charismatic Experience
Mother Margaret was the Consolata Missionary Sister who best embodied the charism given by God to Blessed Giuseppe Allamano. Entirely given to her neighbour because she belonged entirely and exclusively to God. She was all charity towards her neighbour because she was all charity towards her Lord. Her life was a flame, vivid and lively, and a long and fast run. A pioneer race on many impervious paths still to be levelled if not even opened; up and down the hills of Ghekoio, through the forests of Meru, through the savannahs of Nyasaland and the swampy and malarial expanses of Iringa.
“What a comprehensive life she had! There was no missionary work that she did not put her hand to, day and often night. The beginnings of the missionary houses she opened are sometimes legendary, and – because of their conditions of poverty and hardship – recall the famous first foundations of St. Teresa of Jesus. But the mission for Mother Margaret had its dimension of gift, of intense offering, just as the Founder wanted.”[19]
3.3.2.1 From her Diary
We just want to excerpt a few notes from her personal diary to emphasize the height and intensity of her interior life to which Mother Margaret had arrived:
“This is how Jesus likes it, this is how I like it… May the Lord only give me the grace to suffer in silence, in his company alone. The martyrdom of the body and that of the heart for Him alone, for His love. Let no one notice what is going on in this heart of mine and, if possible, not take too much notice of the physical sufferings. All for Jesus alone, in homage to the Blessed Virgin Mary… Lord, send labourers into your vineyard! Do not allow your most precious blood to be poured out in vain for so many souls who are born, live and die without knowing you.”[20]
“I offered myself as a victim to Jesus by his inspiration, a voluntary victim even if imperfect and very imperfect and poor, it is only right that I suffer to purify myself and make reparation for so many of my weaknesses, infidelities and inconsistencies. May the Blessed Virgin obtain for me so much generosity and love so that I may be able to be grateful to the Lord by accepting with humility and love everything from his divine hands.”[21]
The Lord takes her seriously because in her notebooks a few pages later we read:
“It seemed to me that I was doing well, that I was working, that I was sacrificing myself, that I was treating my neighbour well… But this morning I was told that they don’t want me here anymore… And that I’d better retire… What a sting to my ego, to my self-love… I am here and I do not even know where to go to rest. I weep and suffer…, but I want to cry and suffer in silence, alone with Jesus… I will leave, I will go alone to some mission and there, humbly await the divine will. Jesus, all for you, all for your love, for your glory, for the salvation of souls and to obtain for me so much true humility.”[22]
“O Jesus, you know the state of coldness and dryness in which I have been for so long; well, if you like to keep me like that, go ahead, if you do not mind. If it pleases you that I love you between the most squalid aridity and the iciest coldness…, here I am…, thy will be done always and in all things!”[23]
“Do you want my life, O Jesus? I offer it to you for the conversion of these souls; it is a small thing, but I’ll gladly offer it to you.”[24]
A few years later she wrote to Msgr. Pasetto:
“I try to keep myself quiet in this state of aridity and coldness, ready to remain here even until death, provided that there is not even the slightest offense against God in this, but that his good pleasure is thus fulfilled, and I truly love God, even without the consolation of knowing that I love him.”[25]
She was transferred to Massangulo – Niassa, in Mozambique:
“Let my desires, even lawful and holy ones, be silent, if they are not in accordance with your will. May I forget everyone and everything, even the things I love most and the people I hold most dear, to think better about my present duty, to fulfil it with more generosity, even to the point of total sacrifice. Life or death, consolation or aridity, satisfaction, or disappointment…, let everything be for the same thing, aifit is willed by You: that I receive everything from Your hands as a most dear gift.”[26]
The desire for the salvation of souls devoured her. On December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Mother Margaret, on her deathbed, remembers the joy and emotion with which she administered her first baptism in 1913:
“I cannot describe the emotion I felt, so much so that I wept with consolation. After that, I couldn’t take my eyes off that face, which immediately seemed transformed. Even his half-dull eyes seemed to glow with an unusual vivacity. And I kept wiping away my tears.”[27]
[1] Cf. USMC, M. Nazarena Fissore, First Sisters, founding group No. 4.
[2] G. Allamano, Letter to Mother Margaret Demaria, 16 May 1914, in C. Bona (edited by), Almost a lifetime, op.cit., Vol. VI, n. 868, pp. 574-575.
[3] Id., Letter to Mother Margaret Demaria, Turin, June 13, 1914, in Ibid., Vol. VI, n.871, pp. 584-585.
[4] Id., Letter to Sr. Margaret Demaria, Turin, December 28, 1914, in Ibid., Vol. VI, no. 898, p. 685.
[5] Ibid., Letter to Sr. Margaret Demaria, Turin, June 13, 1914, Vol. VI, no. 871, pp. 584-585.
[6] Ibidem.
[7] Ibid., Letter to Sr. Margaret Demaria, Turin, May 16, 1914, Vol. VI, no. 868, pp. 574-575.
[8] Ibid., Letter to Sr. Margaret Demaria, October 15, 1915, Vol. VII, No. 957, pp. 218-219.
[9] Ibid., Letter to Sr. Margaret Demaria, May 24, 1920, Vol. VIII, No. 1350, pp. 610-611.
[10] AMC, Sr. Nazarena Fissore, Official Memorial, no. 110.
[11] Ibid.
[12] G. Allamano, Lettere del 27 giugno e 4 novembre 1914, in C. Bona (ed.), Quasi una vita, op. cit. , No. 872, p. 891, Vol. VI, pp. 588, 648.
[13] AMC, M. Margaret Demaria, Care Memorie 1935, cp. 110. See also D/2 – 108.
[14] Cf. AMC, M. Maria degli Angeli Vassallo di Castiglione, Miscellaneous about the Foundation and Early Years of the Consolata Missionary Sisters, cp. ARTICLE 110.
[15] Cf. AMC, Sr. Margaret Demaria, Clarifications on the Rule and details on the intentions of Ven., Founder received orally from himself, October 1922, ms., in cp. ARTICLE 110.
[16] P.G. Bassi, Cenni Storici dell’Istituto Suore Missionarie della Consolata, Grugliasco 1982, 60. See also AMC, A/2 56, Sr. Margaret Demaria, Circ. to the Sisters of Kenya, doc. 06, p. 2.
[17] Ibid., doc. 61, p. 2.
[18] G. Allamano, Letter to the Missionaries of Kenya, 4 February 1923, n. 523 in I. Tubaldo, Letters to the Consolata Missionaries, op. cit., pp. 459-460.
[19] AMC, M. Margaret Demaria, official memorial, no. 110.
[20] AMC, Deceased Sisters Section, Sr. Margaret Demaria, biographical notes, February 3, 1928, cp. ARTICLE 110.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid., 3 January 1933, cp. ARTICLE 110.
[24] Ibid.
[25] AMC, Deceased Sisters Section, Sr. Margaret Demaria, Notebooks, December 1938, cp.110.
[26] Ibid., Biographical notes, January 3, 1933. ARTICLE 110.
[27] F. Gatti-E. Dominici, Mother Margaret Demaria, notes, pms., n. 8.
