OVIEDO  |  Isabella Vella admitted she always felt like a square peg trying to fit a round hole. She had childhood dreams of getting married and having a family, but that never came together for her.

Over 10 years, her spiritual journey led her to Consecrated Virginity. On Jan. 21, 2025, the feast of St. Agnes, patron saint of virgins, her vocation became reality at her Oviedo parish, Most Precious Blood.

Vella is the third to be consecrated a virgin in the Diocese of Orlando.

“In high school, I was never one of these kids that ran with the popular crowd,” she recalled, describing herself as “kind of unseen.”

The only daughter of Italian parents, her home was loving but strict. She had crushes on boys but wasn’t allowed to date or wear make-up. She had a curfew of 11 p.m. until she was 22 years old. She went to mostly Catholic schools and stayed home for college. She had a boyfriend for a very brief time, but “it didn’t amount to anything,” she said.

As a dental assistant in her 20s, Vella met Pam Clarke, her best friend. When they went out on the town, Clarke would tell her, “You’re not approachable. You scream ‘different.’ I think you’re cut out to be a nun.” Vella admitted this upset her because her ultimate dream was to become a mother.

Sitting in the front row at Vella’s consecration, Clarke recalled those days. “Isabella was more like an older, very protective sister for me. I saw (her vocation) before she saw it. I mentioned it to her a long time ago, but she wasn’t ready to hear it. She had the discipline, the love, the passion and compassion. I really think this was her calling from the start. She just had to work her way into it. Yet when you look back, you see God led her straight to it.”

Once her friend embraced her vocation, an overwhelming peace came over Vella.

“She was full of love and drive for a purpose she had always been looking for,” Clarke said.

But that realization would not come for almost another decade.

At age 24, Vella told her parents she had to get out of New York. She and Clarke moved to Miami. Still seeking purpose in her life, she also shifted careers, eventually to physical therapy.

She only participated in church on Sundays until someone invited her to St. John Neumann Parish.

“It was earth-shattering. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. People were on fire. Father (David) Russell was on fire,” she said. “I became very much involved and made the Emmaus retreat. It was a gamechanger.”

Eventually, Vella moved to central Florida to be closer to Clarke who also relocated with her husband and children.

At Annunciation Parish in Altamonte Springs, she met many seminarians and participated in St. Ignatius of Loyola’s long retreat and developed a more personal and in-depth relationship with Jesus. “I could hear Him more,” Vella recalled. She asked the Lord what His plan was.

That’s when it happened. “In 2016, I was in Eucharistic Adoration, journaling. As quick as a flash of lightning I got all this information. I understood what it was, but it was overwhelming,” she remembered.

“I saw a ring. I saw a vow, and I knew I was tied to the priesthood in some manner. I closed the journal and said to myself, ‘This is a little bit much for me.’” Vella walked out and later told Jesus, if He wanted her to get a ring, He would have to bring it to her.

“It was a series of dreams and events and odd advertisements for rings that led me to this ring with Jer 29:11 on it,” she said. The ring is a heart with a string of silver thorns across it.

She said God’s plan was coming full circle. She recalled watching a movie on the story of Jeremiah’s life. She learned he was the weeping prophet who was not allowed to marry because he had work to do. “I didn’t want to know anything about that because I felt that was not for me,” she said. When readings from Jeremiah were proclaimed at Mass, she would cringe.

She kept it all to herself until she met Grace Kupiszewski, who at the time was discerning religious life and is now Mercedarian Sister Grace of Mary. She confided in her, sharing she knew the calling was tied to the priesthood and there were specific priests she had to pray for, but that was all.

“This is real,” Sister Grace told Vella. “God put us together for a reason.” Vella was reluctant. She told Grace she would think about it.

Unsure of what consecrated virginity was, she learned. “The consecrated virgin lives in full communion with the Church through her spiritual bond with her Bishop, the representative of Jesus Christ in her diocese; and she shares in the concerns of her diocese through their on-going communication. The consecrated virgin is responsible to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. She receives the sacraments regularly and is faithful to private prayer. She keeps as a special focus of her prayer the intentions of her Bishop and clergy and the needs of her diocese,” according to Canon Law and the U.S. Association of Consecrated Virgins.

The consecrated virgin living in the world, as expressed in Canon 604, is irrevocably “consecrated to God, mystically espoused to Christ and dedicated to the service of the Church, when the diocesan bishop consecrates (her) according to the approved liturgical rite.”

In 2021, Sister Grace met consecrated virgin Jennifer Settle at a Theology of the Body conference in Ohio. Settle listened to Vella’s story and knew she was called to consecrated virginity. Shortly after, Settle moved to Orlando and became her mentor.

“It has been a joy to journey with Isabella and to witness her calling to a life dedicated to Jesus as virgin, bride, and spiritual mother,” shared Settle.

“It’s taken me 10 years to get to this point. Things happen for a reason,” said Vella looking back. “I think the fruit of consecrated virginity is reaching outside the realm of the doors of the Church. I have people that come to me with broken hands, but they also have broken spirits… I may not bear children from my womb as would a wife, but together with Christ we bear spiritual children, ministering to other people.

Click here to watch the livestream of the consecration.

By Glenda Meekins of the Florida Catholic staff, January 23, 2025