In this video, we share details about the life of St. M. Elisabeth Hesselblad (1870 – 1957).

Today, June 4, the Church celebrates her Memorial. She also was born on June 4.

In 1888, St. Elisabeth immigrated from Sweden to New York City.

She became a nursing student and worker at Roosevelt Hospital in NYC, across West 59th Street from the Paulist Motherhouse and our mother church, the Church of St. Paul the Apostle.

Today, Roosevelt Hospital is Mt. Sinai West.

It is believed that, while serving at Roosevelt Hospital, St. Elisabeth would ask the Paulists at our Motherhouse to minister to the hospital’s patients when they were near death.

Her years on West 59th Street are just a small part of St. Elisabeth’s remarkable story.

She later moved to Rome, Italy, where she reestablished the Bridgettines.

In 1943 and 1944, during the German occupation of Italy, she helped to hide a Jewish family and two political fugitives. For this, she was recognized as one of The Righteous Among Nations by Yad Vashem: World Holocaust Center in Jerusalem.

We dedicate this video to the memory of Paulist Fr. James McQuade (1929 – 2024), who served for 24 years as a chaplain at Roosevelt Hospital / Mt. Sinai West.

Fr. McQuade loved sharing St. Elisabeth’s story and was very pleased when she was canonized in 2016.

This video is narrated by Paulist Fr. Matt Berrios, rector of St. Patrick’s Catholic American Parish in Rome, Italy.