Bl. Maria Restituta Kafka

Helene Kafka was born in 1894 in Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic, and grew up in Vienna. She trained as a nurse and joined the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity, taking the name Maria Restituta.

She worked as a surgical nurse and anaesthetist at the regional hospital in Mödling, near Vienna. She was so direct and capable that people nicknamed her "Sister Resoluta."

After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Nazi authorities ordered crucifixes removed from hospital rooms. She hung them up again in a new wing. She was also reported for copying an anti-Nazi poem. She was arrested in 1942, sentenced to death, and beheaded in Vienna on March 30, 1943. John Paul II beatified her in Vienna in 1998.

Maria Restituta Kafka was beatified in 1998.

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