Némésia Valle
Giulia Nemesia Valle (1847-1916) was born in Aosta, Italy on June 26, 1847, the first child of Anselmo Valle and Cristina Dalbar. She was baptized that day in the ancient collegiate Church of Saint Orso of Aosta. Her parents were milliners. Subsequent to her mother's death, which occurred when Giulia was four, she and her younger brother Vincent were cared for first by relatives of her father's family and then by her mother's relatives. She was schooled, catechized, and prepared for the Sacraments at home by a priest who was a friend of the family.
At age eleven, Giulia was sent to a boarding school of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Jeanne-Anne Thouret in Besançon , France. There she learned French and gained household skills. Upon her return to Italy at age sixteen, she found that her father had remarried and was living in Pont Saint Martin. However, the family situation was unwelcoming to her.
Meanwhile, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joan Antida Thouret had established a house in Saint Martin. Giulia was able to meet again some of her teachers from the school at Besançon and also had the opportunity to observe their community life, which attracted her. When her father told her that he had arranged a marriage for her, she told him that her wish was, instead, to become a Sister of Charity. On September 8, 1866 her father accompanied her to the order's novitiate at the Monastery of Saint Margaret in Vercelli.
During Giulia's formation, she began to pray a prayer that would remain with her for the rest of her life: "Jesus, empty me of myself, let me be clothed in you. Jesus, for you I live and for you I die..." At the end of her novitiate, she received the religious name Némésia, after the Roman martyr Nemesius, a deacon who was beheaded c. 260 because of his conversion to Christianity.
Sister Némésia was sent to Saint Vincent's Insitute at Tortona, where she worked in the elementary school, the boarding school, and the orphanage. At age forty she was elected superior of her community.
After 36 years at Tortona, she moved to Borgano, near Turin, to work with novices in a new province of the Sisters of Charity. In the thirteen years before her death, she helped to form about five hundred novices.
She died on December 18, 1916.
She was named a Servant of God on July 5, 2002 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II on April 25, 2004.
