Nun who saved Jews in World War II among two new saints canonized by Pope

Pope Francis proclaimed two new saints on Sunday – a Lutheran convert who hid Jews during World War II and the Polish founder of the first men’s religious order dedicated to the immaculate conception. Francis called Swedish-born Elizabeth Hesselblad and Stanislaus Papczynski “exemplary witnesses to this mystery of resurrection” during the canonization Mass in St Peter’s Square. “They remained deeply united to the passion of Jesus,” he added, “and in them the power of His resurrection was revealed.”

In the Passion of Christ, we find God’s response to the desperate and at times indignant cry that the experience of pain and death evokes in us

Pope Francis

Hesselblad saved the lives of 12 Jewish members of the Piperno-Sed families by hiding them in the convent in Rome where she was superior from December 1943 until the capital’s liberation on June 4, 1944. She moved to the US and converted to Catholicism and became a nun. She is only Sweden’s second saint in more than 600 years. Stanislaus of Jesus and Mary, as he is known, supported hospitals and shelters for the poor and cared for the sick in 17th century Poland. In his early years he himself experienced serious sickness and begged in the streets.

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