Print friendly
Four women were canonized on Sunday at the same time as St John Henry Newman.
The four included stigmatists, a mystic, a Roman orphan and a Nobel Peace prize nominee.
Mother Mariam Thresia (1876-1926) was an Indian mystic and founder of the Congregation of the Holy Family. Her prayer life was characterized by frequent ecstasies when she would sometimes levitate. In 1909, she received stigmata and began suffering from demonic attacks.
She cared for the poor, sick, and dying in Kerala and preached to rich and poor on the importance of happy, healthy families to uplift society.
Pope Francis recognized the second miracle attributed to Thresia in February.
Marguerite Bays, a 19th century Swiss laywoman and stigmatist dedicated her life to prayer and service to her parish. She did not marry or enter a religious community. As a Third Order Franciscan, she lived a simple life and carried out a lay apostolate as a catechist.
When she was diagnosed with advanced cancer in 1853, she prayed to to be able to suffer with Jesus rather than healed. However, on 8 September, 1854 when Bl. Pius IX proclaimed the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, she was miraculously healed.
From then on, she proclaimed the Passion of the Lord, because every Friday she had moments of suffering in which there was blood and the stigmata – the pain of the Passion.
After her death in 1879 the Vatican approved a miracle attributed to her intercession. St. John Paul II beatified her in 1995.
Mother Giuseppina Vannini was a 19th century religious sister from Rome. She founded the congregation of the Daughters of St. Camillus, who are dedicated to serving the sick and suffering.
Vannini spent much of her childhood in an orphanage among the Daughters of Charity sisters. On the day of her first communion, she felt the call to a religious vocation.
She had to wait until she was 33 for this because she was rejected after her novitiate due to poor health.
Vannini went on to found the Daughters of St. Camillus. The Giuseppina Vannini Hospital in Rome is named in her honor.
Sister Dulce Lopes was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Born in 1914 Brazil, she joined the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God when she was 18.
In 1959, she founded the Charitable Works Foundation of Sister Dulce. It is now the largest charitable organization in Brazil providing healthcare, welfare and education services.
Sister Dulce died in 1992 after 30 years of respiratory illness. After her body was found to be incorrupt, she was beatified in 2011 and was selected as one of the patrons of World Youth Day in Krakow as a model of charity.
She is the first Brazilian-born female saint.
Source
Related Posts:
News category: World.
