Elena Guerra was born in Lucca, Italy on June 23, 1835 of very pious parents, in an austere environment of rigid discipline and in an era when education of women was limited to household arts, painting and music. Elena did not allow these obstacles to hinder her from obtaining a wide culture which was not common among women of her time. She extended great efforts in acquiring, by herself, knowledge in science and letters and the arts. It can be said that her extraordinary intellectual attitude of spirit not only saved her from pitfalls common to adolescence but also oriented her to correspond generously to God’s call and design of love for her.
The desire to dedicate herself to apostolic activity had already inflamed Elena her youth. Gathering together the young girls of her neighborhood, she organized unions which she called “ Spiritual Friendship”, “The Living Star” and the “The Militia of the Holy Spirit”. These were sparks she ignited that brightened later into fire that was the Congregation she founded to inflame the world with Divine Love.
Elena live her spiritual mission with such intensity as to move with repeated letters the Holy Father Leo XIII to issue the Brief Provida Matris Caritate (May 5, 1895) and the Encyclical Divinum Illud Munus (May 9, 1897) to invite the faithful to pray to the Holy Spirit. A few years before her death on April 11, 1914 the Congregation she founded was recognized by the Church with a Decree of Praise date May 6, 1911.
On April 26, 1959 in Basilica of St. Peter, the Holy Pope John XXIII proclaimed Elena Guerra Blessed distinguishing her as the “Apostle of the Holy Spirit.