Supercentenarian Profile

Maria Francesca Pastore

Born:

1915-10-16

Santeramo in Colle, Apulia

Italy

Current Residence:

Bitonto, Apulia

Italy

Maria Francesca Pastore, also known as Sister (Suor) Letizia, is an Italian nun and supercentenarian.

BIOGRAPHY

Maria Francesca Pastore was born in Santeramo in Colle, Apulia, Italy, on 16 October 1915. She was born to Letizia Maria Vita Giuseppa Perniola and Vito Donato Pastore, a farmer and landowner originally from Gioia del Colle. The couple had welcomed another child, Francesco Pastore, the previous year. She spent her childhood on the family farmhouse in Gioia del Colle. In her early years, she endured the hardships brought by the Spanish flu pandemic.

In the 1930s, she suffered the loss of her mother, who died of breast cancer at the age of 42. At 25, in 1940, she entered religious life and became a nun. When choosing her religious name, she took the name Letizia in honor of her mother — a name that had also been borne by several women in her maternal lineage.

In 1966, her father passed away at the age of 88 from colorectal cancer. During this period, she moved to the Monastery of the Virgins in Bitonto, where she patiently and meticulously devoted herself to the art of bookbinding, restoring volumes damaged by the 1966 Florence flood, and to cultivating the art of miniature painting.