St. Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception

St. Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception (19 August 1910 – 28 July 1946) was born Anna Muttathupadathu in Kudamaloor, Kerala, into a family of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. Determined from girlhood to consecrate herself to God, she is said to have deliberately injured herself to avoid a marriage arranged for her, and eventually entered the Franciscan Clarist Congregation, taking the name Alphonsa after St. Alphonsus Liguori and making her final vows in 1936.

Her short life as a nun and teacher was marked by almost continual sickness and severe suffering, which she embraced with serene patience, uniting her pain to the Cross of Christ. She died at only thirty-five. Devotion at her tomb, accompanied by reported healings, spread quickly among the people of Kerala. She was beatified in 1986 and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, becoming the first woman of Indian origin and the first member of the Syro-Malabar Church to be declared a saint.