“Our charisma is to identify ourselves with Christ in the mystery of his poverty, under the guidance of Saint Anne, Mother of Mary Immaculate, in a service of paternal dedication, inserted in the mission of the Church and collaborating in the work of salvation, which commits us to present to everyone, especially the poorest, the merciful face of the Father” (Const. art. 2).

A style of life that the Blessed Anna Rosa Gattorno embodied in her own existence, driven by her ardent desire to configure herself to the annihilated Christ until death on the cross, with the One whom she used to call “my Good” and whose very path she aspired to follow, with the gaze turned to Mary, the Daughter of Saint Anne, as a complete model of what she experienced as her most intimate vocation: “useless slave of my Jesus, my beloved Master” .

Mother of the Mother of the Redeemer, and therefore inserted in a particular way in the history of salvation, Saint Anna represents a sign of that spirituality of waiting which, in total self-denial and loving openness towards God and towards others, was characteristic of the little remnant “Remnant of Israel”.

Therefore, although Saint Anne's belonging to the chosen people and her privilege of being Mother of Mary are the only elements that we are able to know about her person and her life, they are sufficient to deduce the message on which establishes the peculiar spirituality of the Family, placed by the will of God under her guidance and protection.

Blessed Anna Rosa Gattorno lived her devotion to Saint Anna as a filial and discipleship relationship. And we, as Sons of Saint Anne, as heirs of the gift that God gave to her, discover in Saint Anne a precious and essential presence that determines the family character of our own spirituality.

Therefore, wishing “to be able to make her loved by the whole world”, we Sons of Saint Anne proclaim and praise her sanctity: deepening and concretely living the virtues of her spirituality; contemplating in the prayer the message of Saint Anne in the context of the History of Salvation; and seizing the most appropriate opportunities to present her figure and her message to the faithful and advising them to also appeal to her “powerful help to obtain graces from God” .

With the arrival of the year 1991, it seemed that the “hour of rebirth” that Blessed Anna Rosa Gattorno had been long awaiting had finally arrived. With the invitation of Vatican II to “return to the sources,” the Daughters of Saint Anne found themselves with the many writings of the Foundress, in which they discovered the unfinished chapter of the foundation of the “Sons of Saint Anne.” Meanwhile, the Spirit was raising up everywhere those whom he desired as “Sons of the heart of Holy Mother Anna.”

Thus, after the first years of formation, on August 31, 1993, the first promises of the first Sons of Saint Anne were celebrated in the Church of Saint Anne at the Lateran, in the presence of the Vicar General of His Holiness for the Diocese of Rome, His Eminence Cardinal Camillo Ruini, and Monsignor Natalino Zagotto, Episcopal Vicar for Consecrated Life. Of this first group there are:

1. Fr. José Valdo FEITOSA, FSA;
2. Fr. Patricio Enrique MORALEDA, FSA.

Rooted in the spirituality of the “Poor of Jahweh”, to which Saint Anne, Saint Joachim and little Mary belonged, we live in an intimate communion of prayer and life, animated by faith, hope and charity, in simplicity and prudence, in humility and meekness, solicitous in the commitment to serve all humanity:

• in a service of paternal dedication, which commits us to presenting the merciful face of the Father to all men, under the guidance of Saint Anne, Mother of Mary Immaculate;
• living our consecration in the poverty of heart which became for us, more than the practice of a virtue, the way of being, living and existing;
• and qualifying our apostolic and missionary presence in the world, through our family spirit.

Rosa Gattorno, daughter of Francesco and Adelaide Campanella, was born in Genoa on October 14, 1831, and was baptized the same day, in the Parish of San Donato, with the name Rosa Maria Benedetta. She received education, at home, as was customary in wealthy families of the time, from carefully chosen teachers in Italian literature, French, drawing and music. At the age of twelve she received Confirmation in the Church of Santa Maria delle Vigne.

On November 5, 1852, she married her cousin Girolamo Custo. Therefore, as a wife and mother of three children, she was soon deeply affected by a series of economic collapses and misfortunes, culminating in the death of her husband and the third child. She was widowed at the age of 27.

Pious as a young girl, and sincerely inclined to piety towards the poor and the suffering, purified by trials, made strong in spirit, supported by daily Communion, she soon understood the true meaning of pain, and became a mother, sister, friend of the poor, of the sick, of the excluded, of young women “at risk”.

He assiduously cared for her children and elderly parents, but also found time to dedicate herself to prayer, to the service of the poor, and to the works of zeal that flourished in the Genoa of her time.

He took perpetual private vows of chastity and obedience on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1858; and in 1861, also that of poverty. In 1862 she received the gift of occult stigmata, perceived more intensely on Fridays.

On a night of intense prayer before the Crucifix (in February 1864), Rosa received the inspiration from the Lord to found a new Religious Family in the Church.

Advised by her Confessor and the Bishop, as she resisted this call for a long time, but gave in two years later before the authoritative and firm invitation of the Holy Father Pius IX, who ordered her (03 January 1866) to begin the foundation immediately. About two months later, on March 13, 1866, she left from Genoa to Piacenza, with her 5 first companions, to begin the Work of God: the “Daughters of Saint Anne”.

In the pages of her Memoirs , just over a decade after the first foundation, Rosa Gattorno refers several times to a project concerning the “foundation of the Sons of Saint Anne” - an institute of priests destined to work in the Church for the glory of God, the conversion of sinners, the evangelization and the formation of the Daughters of Saint Anne - and mentions an inspiration received at the time, but does not specify the date and circumstance:

“The three drops of blood that were supposed to be the three orders are always before me. I had never thought about the Sons of Saint Anne, but I believed it had to be a branch of the Daughters of Saint Anne of contemplative, cloistered life. Instead the Sons of Saint Anne …” (Memoirs p. 624).

Upon the death of the Foundress, which occurred in Rome on May 6, 1900, “in the odor of sanctity”, the various causes for canonization began immediately. And a century later, on April 9, 2000, Mother Anna Rosa Gattorno was beatified by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II.