Gulf Pine Catholic
•
July 18, 2014
3
Gulf
Pine
Catholic
(ISSN No. 0746-3804)
July 18, 2014
Volume 31, Issue 23
The
GULF PINE CATHOLIC
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Bishop Morin’s
Calendar
July 20 Installation Mass, Fr. Khoa
P. Vo, St. Ann Parish,
Lizana, 9 am
July 24 Dedication of gym, Sacred
Heart Parish, D’Iberville,
6 pm
July 27 Mass, Nativity BVM
Cathedral Parish, 11 am
Only public events are listed on this schedule
and all events are subject to change. Please
check with the local parish for further details.
Sainthood cause opened for Sister of Charity
who served on the frontier
By Catholic News Service
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (CNS)
-- The Archdiocese of Santa Fe has
received permission from the Vatican
to open a sainthood cause for a Sister
of Charity of Cincinnati who minis-
tered to people on the frontier in the
Southwest in the 1870s and 1880s.
Italian-born Sister Blandina
Segale worked with the poor and
with immigrants, and her ministry
to those groups more than 140 years
ago is as relevant today, said Arch-
bishop Michael J. Sheehan of Santa
Fe.
She also had several encounters
with the notorious Billy the Kid and
his band of outlaws, according to her
published letters.
On June 29 Archbishop Sheehan
posted the historical decree on the
opening of her cause on the doors of
the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis Assisi in
Santa Fe. A delegation representing the Sis-
ters of Charity in Cincinnati was on hand for
the event at the cathedral.
It is the first time in the more than 400-
year history of the Catholic Church in New
Mexico that a decree opening a canonization
cause has been issued.
Archbishop Sheehan held a joint news
conference June 25 with officials from CHI
St. Joseph’s Children to announce that the
Vatican Congregation for Saints’ Causes
had granted permission for the cause to be
opened. St. Joseph’s Children, also known
as St. Joseph Community Health, is part of
Catholic Health Initiatives.
Sister Blandina helped start St. Joseph
Hospital, whose mission continues today as
CHI St. Joseph’s Children.
Now that Sister Blandina’s cause has
been officially opened, she has been given
the title of “servant of God.” The next step
will be for a body of advisers appointed by
the archdiocese to collect documents on her
life and ministry and gather testimony from
dozens of witnesses who knew of her min-
istry.
Born Jan. 23, 1850, in Cicagna, Italy,
Sister Blandina was baptized Rosa Maria
Segale. According to historical records, her
first word was “Gesu,” Jesus. Her family mi-
grated to Cincinnati when she was 4 years
old.
At the age of 16, she entered the Sisters
of Charity of Cincinnati and she was sent to
work in the newly acquired territories of the
western United States in 1872. Arriving first
in Trinidad, Colorado, she taught the poor. In
1877 she was sent to Santa Fe, where she co-
founded public and Catholic schools.
Her work in the territories is well docu-
mented in
“At the End of the Santa Fe Trail,”
a published collection of her letters to her sis-
ter, who also was a Sister of Charity.
“Other heroic virtues include her tireless
work of teaching and healing the immigrant,
the marginalized, the poor and advocating for
women and children,” said a release
from the Santa Fe Archdiocese. “She
challenged the occupying govern-
ment and military in fair treatment of
the Native Americans. Sister Blandi-
na came to the aid of mistreated rail-
road workers, finding time to care for
the sick while building orphanages,
hospitals, schools and trade schools.”
Besides her published letters, the
archives of the Sisters of Charity
motherhouse in Cincinnati contain
much documentation about her life
and ministry.
In those archives and her pub-
lished letters are the stories of her
encounters with Billy the Kid and his
band of outlaws.
One story goes that while in Col-
orado she intervened to stop Billy the
Kid from murdering four doctors in
Trinidad because they had refused
to treat his friend’s gunshot wound.
She nursed the friend back to health. Anoth-
er account says Billy the Kid noticed Sister
Blandina nearby when he was about to rob a
covered wagon and he called off the attack.
Another time she saved a man from a
lynching party by acting as go-between to
get him and the man he shot to reconcile.
That was related in an episode titled
“The
Fastest Nun in the West”
of the popular TV
series
“Death Valley Days.”
Sister Blandina died Feb. 23, 1941, in
Cincinnati at the motherhouse of the Sisters
of Charity at age 91.
However long the process takes to gather
information on her heroic virtues and testi-
mony from witnesses, once it is completed,
all of the materials will be sent to Rome,
where church officials will determine if Sis-
ter Blandina heroically lived the Christian
virtues. If so, the Catholic Church will give
her the title “venerable,” the first step in the
canonization process.
The next step would be beatification,
which requires verification of a miracle at-
tributed to the venerable person’s interces-
sion. In general, a second such miracle is
needed for canonization.
Retired Bishop Ricardo Ramirez of Las
Cruces, N.M., is the postulator for the newly
opened sainthood cause. In May 2013 the
board of directors at CHI St. Joseph’s Chil-
dren approved a motion to petition the Vati-
can to approve opening Sister Blandina’s
cause.
Retired Bishop Ricardo Ramirez of Las Cruces, N.M., is
the postulator for the newly opened sainthood cause for
Sister Blandina Segale, a Sister of Charity who ministered
on the frontier. Pictured with the bishop June 25 is Sister
Patricia Ann Sabourin, a Sister of Charity who serves on
the board of directors at CHI St. Joseph’s Children in
Albuquerque, N.M. The two share their excitement at a
news conference in Albuquerque announcing the Vatican
has allowed the opening of the cause.
CNS photo/Leslie M.
Radigan-Yodice, Archdiocese of Santa Fe
