Mother Eliswa, a new blessed for India

Pope Francis has approved the promulgation of the decree on a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Kerala nun, foundress of the Teresian Carmelite Sisters. Father Lanciotti, killed in Brazil in 2001, the first martyr of the 21st century, will also be blessed. Antonio Gaudí, the architect of the Sagrada Familia, was declared venerable.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) – India will soon have a new blessed. In an audience granted today to Card Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Pope Francis authorised the promulgation of some new decrees, including one concerning a miracle that occurred through the intercession of Mother Eliswa of the Blessed Virgin Mary, born Eliswa Vakayil (1831-1913), a religious sister who lived in Kerala, foundress of the order of the Teresian Carmelite Sisters.

The path to beatification is open for her, as it is for the Italian priest Fr Nazareno Lanciotti (1940-2001), a fidei donum missionary killed in 2001 in São Paulo in Brazil for his work against drug traffickers.

The promulgation of the decree on Fr Lanciotti’s martyrdom is particularly poignant since he is the first martyr killed in the 21st century, a theme very dear to Pope Francis who wanted a day dedicated to new martyrs in the Jubilee 2025, on 9 May.

The future Indian blessed, Eliswa Vakayil, was born on 15 October 1831 in Ochanthuruth, Ernakulam, a district in modern-day Kerala, into a wealthy and very religious family of landowners.

At 16, she was married to Vatharu Vakayil, a wealthy businessman from Koonammavu, with whom she had a daughter in 1851. Widowed the following year, she chose a life of prayer and solitude, marked by frequent participation in the sacraments and care for the poor, living in a simple hut.

In 1862, guided by the Italian Discalced Carmelite Fr Leopoldo Beccaro, she founded the first local Congregation in Kerala, the Third Order of Discalced Carmelite Nuns (TODC), which later became the Teresian Carmelite Sisters.

The life of the new religious family combined contemplation with active life in educating and training poor and orphaned girls, helping the abandoned and the neediest.

The first three women, linked to the Church of the Latin rite, were joined by other women of the Syro-Malabar rite and for the first 20 years the congregation developed with two rites.

Only after Leo XIII's decision to erect the first Syro-Malabar vicariates that two independent religious institutes of women were created: the Congregation of Teresian Carmelites (CTC) of the Latin rite and the Congregation of the Mother of Carmel (CMC) of the Syro-Malabar rite.

Under these circumstances, Mother Eliswa founded a new Latin rite convent in Varapuzha, where she spent the last 23 years of her life, until her death on 18 July 1913.

"With her activity," writes the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, "she contributed to the human and intellectual promotion of women in the complex social and religious context of India at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.”

The miracle attributed to her is also touching: healing a little girl with a cleft lip, a disease diagnosed in 2005 in the fetal phase at the thirty-fourth week of pregnancy by two ultrasound scans conducted at the Lourdes Hospital in Ernakulam.

At the invitation of a nun, the family entrusted themselves to the intercession of Mother Eliswa and a few days later, the baby was born healthy in a caesarean section.

It is worth mentioning that one of the decrees of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints whose promulgation was approved today by Pope Francis, involves the heroic virtues of the great Spanish architect Antonio Gaudí (1852-1926), an artistic genius with a deep religious sensitivity, a visionary, author of the monumental church of the Sagrada Famiglia in Barcelona.

For the Catholic Church, for whom he now becomes venerable, “he was a convinced and practising Christian, diligent in the sacraments, who offered to God the fruits of his work understood as a mission to make people know God and bring them closer to him, turning art into a hymn of praise to the Lord.”

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• pope francis
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• eliwsa vakayl
• antonio gaudí
• fr nazareno lanciotti