Nun who Saved Jews Put Forward as Saint

Mother Mary Richard Beauchamp Hambrough is credited with saving the lives of more than 60 Jews by smuggling them into her convent during the Second World War.

LONDON (UK Catholic Herald) - A little-known English nun who helped to hide Italian Jews from the Nazis in wartime Rome is being considered as a possible saint.

Mother Mary Richard Beauchamp Hambrough is credited with playing a vital role in saving the lives of more than 60 Jews by smuggling them into her convent, the Casa di Santa Brigida, during the Second World War.

The Bridgettines, the order to which she belonged, have now applied to the Vatican for permission to open her cause for sainthood and a formal announcement is expected to be made soon.

It means that she will become one of four British women whose sainthood cases are under consideration by the Church. The early stages of her Cause will involve the examination of her life for evidence of "heroic virtue", before two miracles will be sought to confirm her saintly status.

But if it progresses swiftly, she could become the first British woman saint since 1970 when Pope Paul VI canonised Margaret Clitherow, Anne Line and Margaret Ward among 40 English and Welsh saints who died as martyrs in the Protestant Reformation.

Mother Mary Richard was born Madaleina Catherine in London on September 10 1887 and was received into the Roman Catholic Church in Brighton when she was four years old after her Anglican parents, Windsor and Louise, converted to the faith.

Little is known about her childhood but as a young woman she fell under the influence of Fr Benedict Williamson, a London-based Benedictine monk, and in 1912, at the age of 24, she travelled to Rome to become a nun.

She was following a group of three other English girls who had set out a year earlier wanting to join the Bridgettines, a 14th-century order which had all but died out until it was re-established in 1911 by Blessed Mary Elizabeth Hasselblad, a Swedish convert from Lutheranism.

She took the religious name Mary Richard and was soon chosen as the assistant to Blessed Mary Elizabeth, the abbess. In the following decades she was at her superior's side as the order won canonical approval from the Pope and, attracting a substantial number of vocations, began to open religious houses in Sweden, England, India and Italy.

The order also secured a mother house in Piazza Farnese in historic Rome, a grand building standing on the site of the house of the order's original founder, St Bridget, a patron saint of Europe.

But within years of moving into the new home war broke out and the activities of Mother Riccarda, as she was known to her fellow nuns, were soon concentrated on helping the victims of the conflict.

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Pope Pius XII secretly ordered the religious houses of Rome to shelter Jews after the Gestapo seized 1,007 Jews during a sweep of the city on October 16 1943. He had protested vigorously to the Germans about the round-up but none of those arrested was released.

Mother Riccarda and Mother Mary Elizabeth then willingly gave refuge to scores of Italian Jews, Communists and Poles fleeing in terror from the Nazis.

A source within the Bridgettines has confirmed that Mother Riccarda was at the heart of the enterprise in hiding refugees.

She said: "We were helping many Jewish people during the war and Mother Riccarda was helping Mother Elizabeth to hide them." Mother Riccarda's effort to save Jewish lives is bound to feature strongly in persuading the Vatican that she is a saint - as it was also a factor in her abbess's own swift elevation to beatification.

This was apparent when Pope John Paul II beatified Blessed Mary Elizabeth in 1999, noting in his homily the "care and concern" Riccarda's former boss had shown to "the persecuted Jewish people" and "those who suffered because of racial laws".

A year after the war the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, a friend of both Mother Riccarda and Blessed Mary Elizabeth, converted to the Catholic faith - partly because he was so impressed by the efforts of Catholics to save Jewish lives. He took as his Christian name Eugenio - after Pope Pius, the previous Eugenio Pacelli.

Pope Pius was severely criticised after his death for not speaking out directly against the Holocaust, but he was convinced this would have backfired both against the Jews and the Church. However, his policy of opening up the churches to those fleeing persecution enabled an estimated 85 per cent of Roman Jews escaped the Nazis.

In 2004 Blessed Mary Elizabeth was recognised by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for her work in helping Jews. She died in 1957 and Mother Riccarda succeeded her as abbess until her own death on June 26 1966 at the age of 79. The pair are buried in the same grave in the convent church where they hid people from persecution.

Elisa Famiglietti, the vicar general of the Bridgettines' order in Rome, said the formal opening of the Cause would be "such a great honour for England".

She said: "Mother Riccarda was a wonderful woman. I knew her well and met her in 1954 and was with her up until her death in 1966.

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"She was an angel who did so much to help our Jewish brothers during the war and I know they want to honour her as well. There are about a dozen or so sisters here in the convent in Rome who remember her and we are all very excited at the fact she is being considered for sainthood.

"Mother Riccarda was full of the spirit of God and was a very humble woman, she sang beautifully from the heart and she was devoted to God and she left a mark on all of us.

"Mother Riccarda was humble and discreet and she provided safety and charity for our Jewish brothers during the war but she very rarely spoke about it.

"What I always remember about her is that despite living for so long in Italy she never forgot she was English and always spoke English to us."

Once the nuns have established that Mother Riccarda lived a life of heroic virtue the file on her life will be passed over to the Vatican.

Two miracles are then needed before she can be made a saint - the first for her beatification when she will be declared Blessed and the second for her ultimate canonisation. A file is also being prepared on the cause for sainthood of Katherine Flanagan, a Londoner who joined the Bridgettines a year before Riccarda.

Fr Ray Blake, the parish priest of St Mary Magdalen Church in Brighton, where Riccarda was baptised, said he was "terribly excited" at the prospect of having a saint associated with his church.