Bl. Alexandrina of Balazar

Alexandrina Maria da Costa was born in 1904 in Balasar, a village in northern Portugal. She worked in the fields as a girl. When she was fourteen, three men broke into the house where she was sewing with her sister and another girl. To escape being raped, she jumped from a window and fell four metres.

The injury to her spine slowly paralysed her. From 1925 until her death thirty years later she was confined to bed. She offered her suffering for the conversion of sinners, as a "victim soul": a Catholic term for a person who freely joins their suffering to Christ's for the good of others.

People came from across Portugal to see her. She died on October 13, 1955. John Paul II beatified her in 2004.

Legend and tradition. Her biographers report that she ate nothing but Communion for the last thirteen years of her life, and that she reenacted the Passion each Friday. The Church's decree concerned her virtues; it did not rule on these phenomena.

She did not choose her paralysis, and for years she prayed to be healed. Over time she came to accept it and to offer it.

The Church has declared Alexandrina of Balazar Blessed.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.