Serafina of God

[1] From the age of 15, she would visit and minister to the sick and this ministry would continue notably during the Neapolitan plague of 1656 which took her own mother's life.

After the death of an uncle who had been a priest from this same plague, Prudentia continued her plans for a contemplative convent on the island of Capri, for which she recruited several women from Naples.

On 29 May 1661, in the Naples Cathedral, she and her companions made the vows in the Carmelite order, and Prudentia assumed the religious name Serafina of God.

When that house grew too small for the developing community, a new and elaborate monastery dedicated to the Most Holy Saviour was consecrated in 1675.

Some of the nuns, however, were not as fervent as she, and a resistance began which gathered momentum to the extent that, at the end of her life, she was rejected by the majority of the community she had founded.