Sister Miriam Teresa Beatified In New Jersey At First U.S. Beatification

Our Sunday Visitor ^ | October 11, 2014 | Kathryn Jean Lopez

[Steelfish]

Sister Miriam Teresa Beatified In New Jersey At First U.S. Beatification, new ‘blessed’ remembered as one with ‘mystical visions, deep insights’ Kathryn Jean Lopez OSV Newsweekly 10/8/2014

“The imitation of Christ in the lives of the saints is always possible and compatible with every state in life,” Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, stressed, quoting Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich during her beatification Mass at Newark’s Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Oct. 4.

The beatification Mass, held 19 years to the day of Pope St. John Paul II’s 1995 visit to the cathedral, was the first beatification Mass ever held on United States soil, and it served as a significant step along Blessed Miriam Teresa’s road to sainthood. Beatification Masses outside of the Vatican was a reform made during Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate.

Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1901 to Slovakian immigrants, Alexander and Johanna, and baptized in the Ruthenian-Byzantine rite. Salutatorian of her Bayonne High School class, Miriam Teresa was first attracted to the Carmelites; however, as the youngest of seven, she first took care of her parents.

After her mother died, Miriam Teresa graduated summa cum laude from the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, New Jersey, and taught Latin and English for a year at the Academy of St. Aloysius in Jersey City. Her father died three days before she was to formally enter the Sisters of Charity. She taught at the Academy of St. Elizabeth in Convent Station as a postulant and novice.

[Salvation]

Sister Miriam Teresa Beatified In New Jersey At First U.S. Beatification
A New Jersey nun credited with curing a boy's eye disease with her beatification [Bl. Miriam Teresa Demjanovich]
Blessed in the U.S.A. [Bl. Miriam Teresa Demjanovich]

[Oratam]

From Bayonne of all places.