Bl. Blandine Merten

Maria Magdalena Merten was born in 1883 in the Saarland, Germany. She qualified as a primary teacher and at twenty-five joined the Ursuline Sisters, an order devoted to educating girls. She took the name Blandine of the Sacred Heart.

She taught for a few years, but in 1916 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She spent her last two years in the infirmary and died in Trier in 1918, aged thirty-four, while the First World War was still being fought. "Jesus and I are so close," she used to say. John Paul II beatified her in 1987.

Blandine Merten was beatified in 1987.

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