Elizabeth Hesselblad

Maria Elisabeth Hesselblad ( born June 4, 1870 in Fåglavik, Sweden, † April 24, 1957 in Rome, Italy) is a Roman Catholic Blessed from Sweden.

The converted to Islam founded the Swedish branch of the Order of the Redeemer Birgitt Interior with Mother House in Rome again. In 2000, she was beatified.

Life

Elisabeth Hesselblad was the fifth of 13 children of Augusto Roberto Hesselblad and his wife Cajsa Peter Dag yolk. The family was Protestant; Elizabeth was baptized in July 1870. During her childhood, the family moved for economic reasons to frequently. 1886 Elisabeth Hesselblad went to work looking for Karl Borg and emigrated two years later at the age of 18 years in the U.S..

At the Roosevelt Hospital in New York, she trained as a nurse. She had narrow in their education and professional activities contact with Catholics and decided to join the Roman Catholic Church. On August 15, 1902, she was taken by the Jesuit Giovanni Giorgio Hagen, who became their spiritual leader, in Washington in the Roman Catholic Church. She left the United States and returned to Europe. In Rome, where she attended the Church of St. Birgitta and the Casa di Santa Brigida in Piazza Farnese, she became the received Confirmation. Once again, she went back to the U.S., but only for a short time. On March 25, 1904 she settled in Rome in the Casa di Santa Brigida, where once lived the Carmelites. 1906 allowed her Pope Pius X to put on the habit of the Order of the Redeemer.

After taking the vows she visited the few remaining monasteries of the Order of the Redeemer in various European countries with the aim to re- establish a monastery the interior Birgitt in Rome 1908-1911. This happened on November 9, 1919, first three British postulants. In Sweden, the Order branch was in 1923 in Djursholm down. Since 1931, the Casa di Santa Brigida, Rome is the mother house of the so-called Swedish branch of the Order. During the Second World War, the Order was home with her consent Jews and political refugees. Elisabeth Hesselblad died on 24 April 1957 in Rome; the beatification process was initiated shortly thereafter. The beatification, Pope John Paul II on April 9, 2000 in front of St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.

Since 2002, with the Birgittenkloster Bremen is the only branch of the Swedish branch of the Redeemer Order in Germany. The Birgitt -Kloster Altomuenster in Bavaria belongs to the old branch of the Order.

Remembrance

April 24