Bl. Irene Stefani

Mercede Stefani was born in 1891 at Anfo near Brescia, Italy, the fifth of twelve children. In 1911 she joined the Consolata Missionary Sisters and took the name Sister Irene.

In 1914 she went to Kenya. During the First World War she nursed African porters caught up in the fighting between the British and German colonies. From 1920 she taught at the mission of Gekondi. The Kikuyu people called her "Nyaatha", meaning "mother all mercy".

She caught the plague while nursing a sick man and died in 1930, aged thirty-nine. She was beatified at Nyeri, Kenya, in 2015.

Irene Stefani was beatified in 2015 by Pope Francis.

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