![]() ![]() According to Katharina (the letter was never produced at trial), the man used “extremely obscene expressions” and, as Wolf puts it, “more or less asked both nuns to engage in sexual acts with him.” What really sent Katharina over the edge, however, was a letter from the Americano, written in German, that Maria Luisa showed her because the novice mistress herself could not read the language. The authority to perform these and other sacred rites was reserved strictly for priests - and not all priests, either. Maria Luisa even seemed to be hearing confessions and performing some kind of exorcism on a troubled man known as “the Americano” (he was in fact Tyrolean). The novice mistress received frequent visions, messages and even letters from such heavenly personages as the Virgin Mary and Jesus himself, wore holy rings supposedly bestowed on her by the same parties and seemed to have everyone from the abbess to the convent’s confessors wrapped around her little finger. The princess had been a bit troubled by the way the sisters of Sant’Ambrogio venerated their convent’s late founder, Maria Agnese Firrao, and even more troubled by the similar cult that had formed around the very-much-alive Maria Luisa. Even in writing her accusation, Katharina could not refrain from praising the novice mistress’ “superior elegance and ease in conversation” and her display of “the utmost delicacy in her dealings with others.” Maria Luisa, although of lowly birth, was beautiful, intelligent and extremely charismatic. The problems centered around Sister Maria Luisa, a nun in her early 20s who had somehow acquired multiple positions of authority in the order, including the title of novice mistress (overseer of the novices). ![]() This quiet regimen seemed just the ticket for the weary, devout princess, but no sooner had she take the cloth than she began to notice troubling aspects to convent life. ![]() Only in emergencies were men, even priests, allowed within the clausura, or convent interior. Sant’Ambrogio was “enclosed,” meaning that the nuns were sequestered from all contact with the outside world apart from rare interviews conducted through metal bars and visits from priestly confessors or doctors. (Her granddaughter was the queen of Portugal.) Twice widowed and sickly, she entered the convent in her late 30s, seeking a “a place of cloistered peace and holy order” in which to live a contemplative life, although she also nurtured the dream of establishing an order of her own. Katharina, a Hohenzollern princess, belonged to one of the great royal Germanic dynasties, which include the Hapsburgs. In fact, the Sant’Ambrogio case was itself a sex-abuse scandal, although that aspect, however sensational, was not necessarily the Church’s primary concern. Hubert Wolf’s “The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio” offers a learned yet fascinating account of this incident - little known because the Vatican kept most of the embarrassing details in-house, a policy it would employ when handling sexual-abuse scandals a century later. Furthermore, the case against the convent of Sant’Ambrogio had tendrils that climbed up to the highest reaches of the Church and entwined around the great Catholic controversies of the day. It was an accusation more lurid than any popular anti-clerical satire, full of sexual transgressions, heretical practices and homicidal schemes. From his estate in Tivoli, the relieved but traumatized Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen began to draft a denunciation of her one-time sisters back in Rome. When her cousin the bishop answered her call and arrived at Sant’Ambrogio, he promised to rescue her and soon delivered on that promise. She pleaded with him to rescue her, claiming that she had been the target of several poisonings and was in mortal danger. In the summer of 1859, a desperate nun in the Roman convent of Sant’Ambrogio sent a letter to her kinsman, a bishop in the Vatican. ![]()
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