Sister M. Roselí Romanzini
Born in 1966 in the south of Brazil (Liberato County, Diocese of Frederico Westphalen), eldest of four siblings, entered the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary in 1994. After a basic training with the artist Sr. M. Senira Biscaro, who introduced Sr. M. Roseli to religious art, an internship in the goldsmith’s shop of the Brothers of Mary in Schoenstatt/Germany, and further studies in fine arts. Sr. M. Roseli works as a goldsmith and silversmith in the studio ‘Metalarte José Kentenich’ in Santa Maria / Brazil.
What experiences have formed your life as a woman?
My great experience was the encounter with Schoenstatt, especially with regard to self-education. I experienced that it is worthwhile to use all one’s strength for one’s own spiritual growth and personality formation that contributes to the renewal of society. In my encounter with Schoenstatt, I would like to emphasize the day of my investiture, when I received the dress of the Sisters of Mary with six other young women. Just as other women prepare themselves with great expectation and joy for the great day of their wedding and live from it, I experience to this day how beautiful it is to give myself body and soul through the consecration of my life as a Sister of Mary. This forms me as a woman.
Where have you experienced God in your life?
Life in our parental home was already an experience of God. We prayed the rosary every evening as a family and those were holy moments for all of us. But what shaped me for my whole life was experiencing my mother’s faith, love and tenderness. During these times of prayer she was truly absorbed in God. Knowing that she was carrying great sorrow, I felt that she would then surrender everything that had happened during the day and all that would come the next day.
Upon entering the community of the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary and encountering our shrine there, I experienced the same love, faith and tenderness that Mary, our Mother, gives us from her throne of grace.
What do you see as the greatest challenge for women today?
In my opinion, the greatest challenge for women today is the demand to find the balance between their duties as a wife and mother and as a professional woman. Older women face the added hardship of loneliness and abandonment as families have become very small.
Another challenge is the great struggle to be an authentic, integral woman, especially with regard to the virtue of purity in a society so marked by corruption, and the lack of discretion and reverence for the dignity of others and one’s own dignity.
What do you want to change in the world through your life?
Through the consecrated life as a Schoenstatt Sister of Mary, in my profession of sacred art, I try to bring families, communities and parishes closer to God and to the Blessed Mother through the design of home shrines or parish shrines, wayside shrines of the MTA , crosses, symbols for Schoenstatt shrines (frame and picture of the MTA, God the Father symbol, Holy Spirit symbol, etc.). These objects are always made with great love and commitment, and we always seek to offer all the difficulties that arise to God through the hands of the Blessed Mother for the people.