Blessed Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad
Today's saint of the day is Blessed Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad (1870 - 1957), a convert to Catholicism, a nurse, and a nun. Mary Elizabeth was born in the little village of Faglavik, in the province of Alvsborg, on the 4 June 1870, the fifth of thirteen children born to Augusto Roberto Hesselblad and Cajsa Pettesdotter Dag. The following month she was baptized and received into the Reformed Church of Sweden in her parish in Hundene. Her childhood was lived out in various places, since economic difficulties forced the family to move on several occasions. In 1886, the family's poverty obliged Elizabeth to look for work. Two years later, having come up against difficulties in Sweden, she decided to leave for America, in order to help her family financially. Arriving in New York on July 9, 1888, she entered a school for nurses at Manhattan's Roosevelt Hospital. She often took care of workers injured on the building site of the future Saint Patrick's Cathedral, many...