My aunt, Sister Mary Susan Boyle, Sister of Charity, worked for many years with Sister Zita of Saint Elizabeth’s convent at the Sister Miriam Therese League in Convent Station, NJ. Sister Zita was the force behind the cause for Sister Miriam Theresa Demjanovich’s canonization. I don’t think the League House exists anymore, but when I was a young man, my mother and I used to visit my aunt and the other dear sisters who lived at the League House every year. I have fond memories of this. My aunt, in her eighties, is still at St. Elizabeth’s convent at the main house on the college campus. She is the last living relative of my parents’ brothers and sisters, seventeen in all, counting mom and dad. When I was studying in Rome in 1973 I visited the Postulator for the cause of Sister Miriam Theresa. I do not remember his name. He was a Redemptorist and was wearing a suit and tie when I called on him at his monastery. Rather strange, bu actually quite common for European priests at the time working in Rome, sad to say. This latest news, however, is wonderful. I must tell my aunt in case she has not heard. Would it not be a great blessing to have another (the fourth) native born saint from the United States? And from New Jersey, my home state? If it should happen, she would be in very prestigious company because there are about twenty other US born Venerables on line for beatification. By the way, the three native born US saints are: Saint Elizabeth Seton, Katherine Drexel, and (before there was a USA) Kateri Tekakwitha.
You can obtain information and a biography about Sister Miriam Theresa by writing to the Sister Miriam League of Prayer, Convent Station, NJ, 07961. Her works, all written before her final profession (she died at age twenty-six) include:
- Charles C. Demjanovich, ed. (1928). Greater Perfection: Being the Spiritual Conferences of Sister Miriam Teresa. New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons. OCLC 7881709.
- Charles C. Demjanovich, ed. (1954). The Seventieth Week. Paterson, New Jersey: St. Anthony Guild Press. OCLC 4338827.
- Meditations on the Stations of the Cross. Convent Station, New Jersey: Sister Miriam Teresa League of Prayer. OCLC 74278575.
- The Sacrifice of the Mass: The Greatest Means of Sanctification. Convent Station, New Jersey: Sister Miriam Teresa League of Prayer.
Vatican Radio: Pope Francis has approved the attribution a miraculous healing to the intercession of a young American nun, opening the way to her beatification. Born and raised in New Jersey, Miriam Teresa Demjanovich (1901-1927) entered the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth in 1926 and died one year later, taking her religious vows one month before her death.
The miracle that opens the way for the beatification of Miriam Teresa Demjanovich involves the restoration of perfect vision to a boy who had gone legally blind because of macular degeneration.
Silvia Correale, the postulator for Sr Teresa’s cause in Rome, said : “All ophthalmologists know that this condition cannot be totally healed. It can be stopped from advancing, but it cannot be fully cured.” The decision as to the miraculous nature of this healing was unanimous by all committees, she added.
Msgr Giampaolo Rizzotti of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints added that the miracle took place in 1964. The date of the beatification, he said, now depends upon the bishop of the diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, which first opened the cause, to contact the Vatican and establish a date. Read more here.
