Born into a middle-class family, she studies in a Swiss boarding school. Back in Milan, she dedicated herself to abandoned and poor children, collaborating with Rita Tonoli, who later founded an institute dedicated to the assistance of these children and who put her in contact with Fr. Agostino Gemelli, just converted. The meeting with the friar marks for her the beginning of a collaboration that will last a lifetime: Catholic Action, Secular Institute of the Missionaries of Kingship, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Work of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
In 1918 he founded the Milanese Catholic Women's Youth, called to this post by Card. Ferrari who, in the face of Marxist propaganda, sees the urgent need for the formation of young people too (the young people were already organized), to witness the baptism received with their lives. Barelli feels inadequate for this task, but in the face of the urgency that is pointed out to her, she accepts. She becomes the elder sister of a group of young people who from the Milanese parishes find themselves in the bishopric to deepen theological and social problems to counter the Marxist propaganda.
The positive experience of Milan pushes Pope Benedict XV to entrust it with the same task for all the Italian dioceses. Once again, Barelli would like not to accept the post, but to her resistance and the desire to leave as a missionary, the Pope replies: "Her mission is Italy", and sends her "not as a teacher among students, but as a sister among sisters ”, so that the young women become aware of their being Christian and rediscover their dignity as women.
We are in 1918, and Barelli begins her first tour along the peninsula to rally the young women, who respond with enthusiasm. He proposes to them a demanding and difficult path: to go against the current, thanks to the personal commitment of formation and group life, having as its foundation a trinomial: Eucharist, apostolate, heroism, which will mark the lives of many young women.
In 1919, together with Father Gemelli, he founded the Secular Institute of the Missionaries of the Kingship of Christ and with him also the Work of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ for the diffusion of the liturgy. In 1921 she was part of the group of founders of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, firmly convinced of dedicating it to the Sacred Heart and became its indispensable "cashier". It organizes conferences, pilgrimages, purity weeks, social weeks and activities for the missions.
She participates in the international congresses of the GF and is always open to welcome what is new from the experiences of other countries and can be transferred to the Italian reality, marked by the fascist regime that she considers incompatible with the formation of the GF. When the regime collapsed, he did a valuable job of integrating women into the political life, since he was voting for the first time.
Her openness to the world that surrounds her, today we would say to the signs of the times, is extraordinary, because it arises from her mystical life which makes her grasp the great potential of the faith and mission of the Church. The support of the GF for the Benedict XV Institute in China was decisive and concrete, from which a Chinese female religious congregation was born, currently operating. His spirituality, fundamentally Franciscan, is enriched by other types of spirituality present in CA which, as such, is nourished by the baptismal spirituality common to all the faithful. This explains how religious vocations of different types were born in GF and marriage was experienced as an authentic vocation.
From the baptismal evangelical radicality come the many witnesses to the sanctity of the GF (some already officially recognized as such by the Church): young women who heroically followed Christ on the roads of the world. In 1946, Armida was appointed general vice president of Catholic Action by Pius XII. In 1949, she fell ill with bulbar palsy, which led to her death. He writes: "I accept death, whatever the Lord wills, in full adherence to the divine will".
She is buried in the chapel of the Catholic University in Milan.
She was declared Blessed on April 30, 2022.
