The founder of the religious community of the “Povere Figlie di Maria Santissima Incoronata, Adoratrici Perpetue del Sacro Cuore di Gesù"
Fardella was born on May 24, 1867 in New York, to a Sicilian father and an Irish mother, both of noble ancestry, but quickly reduced to poverty. Returning to Trapani, the original city of her father, she lost her mother when she was eleven years old; she was then placed in boarding school. When she left, at sixteen, she was already considered of marriageable age: her father, in fact, forced her to marry an officer, Raffaele de Blasi, who followed in all the movements due to the military life. Wherever he went, he tried to collect children and adolescents, otherwise forced to live in the streets.
In 1896 he arrived in Mantua, where he founded the Povera Casa di San Giuseppe. In 1902 he founded the new Institute of the Povere Figlie di Maria Santissima Incoronata, to direct that structure, but he had to return to Trapani with her husband. He mourned his death in 1937 and, since then, devoted himself even more intensely to his charitable works, which had also taken root in Sicily. He died in Trapani on 26 August 1957; shortly before, he had taken his vows in his Institute. On 8 November 2017, Pope Francesco authorized the promulgation of the decree declaring it Venerable. His body was transferred, ten years after his death, in the church dell'Addolorata in Trapani.