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Blessed Maria Elizabeth Hesselblad, a Swedish Lutheran who immigrated to New York at the age of 16, studied there and became a nurse, and converted to Catholicism thanks to the witness of her patients, is to be canonized on June 5, 2016.
After suffering terrible health problems, she later made a pilgrimage from the US to Rome. There she recovered her health, spent time with the Carmelites, and began studying St. Bridget of Sweden, her daughter St. Catherine of Sweden, and the Brigittine Order they founded in the Middle Ages, which had died out after the Reformation. As it turned out, she never returned to the US. After receiving permission from the Pope to follow the Brigittine Rule, she ended up re-founding the order and reviving its unique habit. She even lived to see the order return to majority-Protestant Sweden. The order is now found all over the world.
So now we’ll have another US saint!
(And she’s a strong contrast to the Church of Sweden bishop who hit the news this week, by advocating the removal of crosses from churches as being “unwelcoming” for Muslims.)
Here’s the press release from Sweden.
Hesselblad got her canonization announced by the Consistory at the same time as Mother Teresa’s, so I thought I’d mention it here.
After suffering terrible health problems, she later made a pilgrimage from the US to Rome. There she recovered her health, spent time with the Carmelites, and began studying St. Bridget of Sweden, her daughter St. Catherine of Sweden, and the Brigittine Order they founded in the Middle Ages, which had died out after the Reformation. As it turned out, she never returned to the US. After receiving permission from the Pope to follow the Brigittine Rule, she ended up re-founding the order and reviving its unique habit. She even lived to see the order return to majority-Protestant Sweden. The order is now found all over the world.
So now we’ll have another US saint!
(And she’s a strong contrast to the Church of Sweden bishop who hit the news this week, by advocating the removal of crosses from churches as being “unwelcoming” for Muslims.)
Here’s the press release from Sweden.
Hesselblad got her canonization announced by the Consistory at the same time as Mother Teresa’s, so I thought I’d mention it here.