Bl. Angela Salawa

Aniela Salawa was born in 1881 at Siepraw, Poland, into a large, poor family, and learned her faith from her mother. From fifteen she worked as a domestic servant in Kraków.

The death of her sister Teresa in 1899 shook her into a deeper life of prayer. She decided not to marry, and she became an apostle among Kraków's maids, helping and encouraging them. In 1912 she became a Franciscan tertiary. During the First World War she cared for wounded soldiers in the hospitals.

After she lost her job she lived in poverty in an attic room. She died in Kraków's St Zita hospital in 1922. John Paul II beatified her in Kraków in 1991.

Angela Salawa was beatified in 1991.

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