From: rich <
richarra@gmail.com>
March 30th - Bl. Restituta Kafka
(Also known as Helen Kafka, Helena Kafka, Maria Restituta Kafka,
Sister Restituta)
Memorial 30 March
30 October on some calendars
Executed 1943
Pope John Paul II has beatified probably more holy persons than any
pope before him. One reason for this is that during his reign the
secret archives of Republican Spain and the Nazi and the Communist
governments have become largely available. With these sources now
accessible, it is becoming easier to discover what and why Catholics
suffered for their faith in the cruel years of totalitarianism.
On June 21, 1998, the Holy Father, concluding a three-day visit to
Austria, declared four Austrian nationals =E2=80=9Cblessed=E2=80=9D. One of=
the most
fascinating of this group was Sister Restituta Kafka, a nun who was a
nurse and anesthetist in a Viennese hospital. The account we follow
here tells little about her background, but presents a stirring
account of her martyrdom. It comes from the London Tablet.
According to The Tablet, Sister Restituta was no ordinary nun. Friends
often called her =E2=80=9CSister Resoluta=E2=80=9D, for resolute she was: a=
very
independent woman who stood firmly by her decisions. After a busy day
at the hospital, following her usual routine, she would drop in for
dinner at a nearby tavern and order =E2=80=9Ca goulash and a pint of my usual=E2=80=9D--her favorite beer. If she was set in her ways, she was also unimpressive in appearance. Though short in height, she was also plump
in figure, weighing =E2=80=9C14 stone=E2=80=9D (196 pounds). As an experien= ced
technician, she was probably middle-aged.
For all that, Sister Restituta was a caring woman, very competent in
her specialty, and graced with an infectious sense of humor. Her true
character was to be tested after the Nazis seized Austria in April
1938.
One of the first steps the invaders took was to close over 1400
establishments that were under religious control. More than 200
convents were suppressed, all Catholic societies and youth
organizations were disbanded, and numerous charitable institutions
were seized. Sister Kafka was allowed to continue her work, but her
hospital was put under the control of personnel loyal to the new
government.
Restituta, a woman religious as well as an anesthetist, had always
carefully attended to the spiritual needs of her patients. Although
religious acts were now forbidden in the hospital wards, she continued
to pray, at least privately, with the sick, and see that they secretly
received the last rites. The surgeon with whom she worked in the
operating room was a fanatical Nazi, but he depended so much on her
that at first he kept quiet about her forbidden religious
interventions.
Not long afterward, however, when a new hospital wing was opened,
Sister Kafka made bold to hang crucifixes in the rooms. She was also
discovered making a copy of an anti-Fascist song. The surgeon now
decided it was his patriotic duty to report her to the Gestapo. As a
result, on Ash Wednesday, February 18, 1942, a group of SS storm
troopers came to the hospital and arrested her.
Sister Restituta was imprisoned for a year, but imprisonment did not
change her character or her firmness. Although the food allowed her
was meager, she gave most of it to others. Thus she saved the life of
a pregnant mother and her baby.
After a year of trying to break this unbreakable woman, Martin
Bormann, Hitler's own secretary, decided that it was necessary not
only to punish Sister Kafka, but to make an example of her and show
others that disobedience would not be tolerated. He sentenced her to
execution by the guillotine, that weighted lethal knife that had
brought quick death by beheading to so many during the French
Revolution. A chaplain was allowed to attend Sister Kafka to the door
of the chamber of execution but no farther. He reported hearing the
swish and thud of the sharp steel down its tracks.
Sister Restituta had chosen the religious name in honor of a Roman
martyr of the third century, who, by the way, had also died by
decapitation. The Nazis were aware that Catholics would want to take
Sister Kafka's body and honor it as that of a martyr, so they hurri=
ed
it off for burial in an unidentified mass grave. She was the only nun
to be sent to the guillotine by the Nazis in the German territories.
It is customary at beatifications for the friends of a Blessed to
present the pope with an ornamental reliquary containing a bone of the candidate for beatification. Sister Restituta's reliquary contained
just a piece of her habit, the only earthly thing she died possessed
of. In 1995 the street on which her old hospital stands, now a
maternity hospital, had been renamed =E2=80=9CSister Restituta Street=E2=80= =9D. Thus
all babies born there now have her name on their baptismal
certificates.
=E2=80=93
Saint Quote:
In your prayers, if you would quickly and surely draw upon you the
grace of God, pray in a special manner for our Holy Church and all
those connected with it.
--St. Louis de Blois
Bible Quote
"In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom
which will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not pass into the
hands of another race: it will shatter and absorb all the previous
kingdoms and itself last for ever.." [Daniel 2:44] RSVCE
<><><><>
PRAYER TO JESUS CRUCIFIED
TO OBTAIN THE GRACE OF A HAPPY DEATH # 3
My Lord Jesus Christ,
through that bitterness
which Thou didst suffer on the Cross,
when Thy Blessed soul
was separated from Thy sacred Body,
have pity on my sinful soul,
when it shall depart from my miserable body,
and shall enter into eternity.
--- NewsGate v1.0 gamma 2
* Origin: News Gate @ Net396 -Huntsville, AL - USA (1:396/4)