Vera Grita, born in Rome on January 28, 1923, was an elementary school teacher. After being trampled on by a crowd fleeing a bombing in Savona on 4 July 1944, her injuries marked her irreparably. She was 21. Despite her condition, she accepted to teach in peripheral schools in the Ligurian hinterland: Rialto, Erli, Alpicella, Deserto di Varazze. In Savona, in the Salesian parish of Mary Help of Christians, she participated in parish life. From 1963 the Salesian Fr Giovanni Bocchi was her confessor; when she became a Salesian Cooperator (1967), she entrusted herself to the guidance of Fr Gabriello Zucconi.
On September 19, 1967, the mystical experience began inviting her to live the joy and dignity of a daughter of God in full, in communion with the Trinity and in Eucharistic intimacy with Jesus received in Holy Communion and present in the Tabernacle. "We are the wine and water: you and me, me and you. We are one thing: I dig in you, dig, dig to build myself a temple: let me work, do not set me obstacles [... ] the will of my Father is this: that I remain in you, and you in Me. Together we will bear great fruit." It was the first of the messages that make up the Work of the Living Tabernacles that Vera, struggling with the fear of being the victim of deception, wrote in obedience to Fr Zucconi.
Vera died on 22 December 1969. The messages explicitly refer to Don Bosco and his "da mihi animas cetera tolle" that tend to renew in the Salesians the sense of union with God and trust in Mary Help of Christians, to give God through a tireless apostolate that cooperates in the salvation of humanity. The Work, by the will of the Lord, is entrusted in the first instance to the sons of Don Bosco for its fulfillment and diffusion in the parishes, in the religious institutes and in the Church: "I chose the Salesians because they live with the young, but their life of the apostolate must be more intense, more active, more heartfelt."
The cause for the beatification of the Servant of God Vera Grita was launched on 22 December 2019, the 50th anniversary of her death, in Savona with the presentation of the Supplication libellus to the diocesan Bishop Msgr. Calogero Marino by the Postulator Fr Pierluigi Cameroni, SDB. Actor of the Cause is the Salesian Congregation.
