PRINCE LEAVES WORLD

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 777, 25 September 1929, Page 11

PRINCE LEAVES WORLD

HUSBAND AND WIFE ENTER CONVENTS FINAL RENUNCIATION Four years ago, Don Ignazio Paterno, Prince of Biscari and his wife, Donna Angelica, made up their minds to retire from the world and devote themselves to the religious life. Happily married for twenty-five years, but without children, they had lived for some time apart from society, and spent the greater part of their vast wealth on works of charity. In 1925 they obtained permission from the Pope to make the final renunciation. Don Ignazio entered a Barnabite monastery at Monza, to train for the priesthood, and Donna Angelica retired to a Carmelite convent at Milan. As, during the long novitiate, neither showed signs of wavering, Don Ignazio has now been consecrated priest, the ceremony taking place in the chapel of his wife’s convent, so that she might have the consolation of witnessing it, and a few days later, on July 2, by special permission of the Head of the Carmelite Order, “Padre Ignazio” himself officiated when Donna Angelica took her final vows and received her veil from his hands. She will he known hencelorth as Suora Maria di Gesu. This dramatic finale has aroused much comment, for, as the official preacher on the occasion truly said:

“We often hear of fathers and mothei's offering their children to God, hut there are few instances in history of a husband offering his wife.” Two similar cases have been mentioned. A few years ago a young married couple belonging to the Belgian aristorcracj r agreed to part in the same way, and more recently an elderly Spanish general and his wife renounced the world, following the example of their own son and daughter. The genera! entered the monastery where his son is Prior, while his wife became a nun in the convent of which her daughter is Mother-Superior.