Bl. Teresa Demjanovich

Teresa Demjanovich was born in 1901 in Bayonne, New Jersey, the youngest of seven children of immigrants from eastern Slovakia. She was baptised in the Byzantine Catholic church of St John the Baptist in Bayonne.

She hoped to become a Carmelite nun, but poor eyesight and the need to nurse her sick mother held her back. After her father's death she saw that she could serve God by teaching, a gift she had in abundance. She joined the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth as Sister Miriam Teresa. She wrote plays, poems and spiritual meditations.

She fell seriously ill and died in hospital in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1927, aged twenty-six. She was beatified in Newark in 2014.

Teresa Demjanovich was beatified in 2014.

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