Bl. Mafalda of Portugal

Mafalda was a daughter of King Sancho I of Portugal. After her father died, the regent arranged her marriage to the boy king Henry I of Castile to secure peace with Castile. Pope Innocent III stopped the marriage, or annulled it, because the two were related.

Mafalda then lived at the monastery of Arouca. She brought in Cistercian nuns to reform it and took their habit herself. She was known for a severe life of fasting, nights of prayer and sleeping on bare ground. She founded hospices and religious houses in lands damaged by war, and supported the arrival of the Franciscans and Dominicans in Portugal.

She left the monastery only to make pilgrimages to the cathedral of Porto. She fell ill on the way back from one of them and died in the 1250s. Pius VI approved her cult in 1793.

Legend and tradition. Tradition says her body was found intact when it was exhumed in 1617.

The Church has declared Mafalda of Portugal Blessed.

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