Bl. Maria Teresa of St. Joseph

Anna Maria Tauscher van den Bosch was born in 1855 in Sandow, Brandenburg (now in Poland). Her father was a Lutheran pastor. While working as director of the city asylum in Cologne, she became a Catholic in 1888, against her father's will, and was no longer allowed into her family home.

Inspired by St Teresa of Ávila, she founded a congregation that joined the Carmelite spirit of prayer with care for orphaned, poor and abandoned children. Refused permission to wear a religious habit in Germany, she moved from country to country. In 1904 she was allowed to buy an old house at Rocca di Papa near Rome, which became the first mother house of the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus. Her homes for children, called St Joseph's Homes, later spread in Germany. In 1912 she went to found houses in America and Canada. After returning in 1920 she settled the mother house at Sittard in the Netherlands, where she spent her last years. She died in 1938 and was beatified in 2006.

Her conversion cost her her family home, and her foundation began with years of rejection and wandering. In her autobiography she described those early sufferings as water she had to pass through.

The Church has declared Maria Teresa of St. Joseph Blessed.

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