Swedish Saint: "If the Pope in Rome and All the Priests Should Leave the Church…"

A brilliant 30-minute film (below) about Saint Elisabeth Hesselblad (+1957), the first Swedish saint since the late Middle Ages, has been produced by EWTN Norge. The narrator is Clemens Cavellin, a Catholic academic.

Elizabeth, a Lutheran, emigrated to the USA in 1888. She started working from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., suffered from a stomach illness with internal bleeding, led a lonely and sad life and ended up in hospital.

In the hospital she received poor treatment, felt forgotten and finally turned to God: "If You make me well enough, I will dedicate my life to Your poor and never let anyone You send me to care for be left like this".

Elizabeth recovered, learned to be a nurse, and began to attend different churches and even synagogues in search of answers to her religious questions.

Most of the Catholics she met were poor labourers. As a nurse, she once treated a Dominican nun in a convent. There she read about the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

She was employed as a nurse by a wealthy Catholic family, became friends with their daughters and travelled with them around Europe. They saw a Corpus Christi procession in Brussels.

When the bishop approached Elisabeth with the monstrance, she, whose heart was always full of pain and struggle, was instantly filled with sweetness. A gentle voice, which seemed to come both from outside and from within her heart, said: "I am the one you are looking for".

She fell to her knees.

Back in the USA, she was not yet ready to enter the Church, but she prayed: "If it is Your will that I should take this step and enter the Catholic Church, I ask You to give me such a strong faith that if the Pope in Rome and all the priests should leave the Church, I would still stand firm.

On the Feast of the Assumption in 1902, she was conditionally baptised and became a Catholic. As she prayed, she saw inwardly "how everything in her life was swept away by a strong hand and only God remained". Her desire was to do His holy will at all costs.

She set off for Europe, but on the ship her stomach ulcers reopened and she bled for three days. After recovering for six weeks in a London hospital, she travelled to Rome.

In the church in Piazza Farnese, where the Swedish Saint Brigid (+1373) had lived and which then belonged to Carmelite nuns, she heard an inner voice saying: "Here I want you to serve me". Elizabeth thought it was an illusion.

After further travels through Europe, the voice again told her to return to St Brigid's house.

But she didn't change her original plans and returned to the USA, where she corresponded with priests about her vocation. She still struggled with her bleedings.

With the help of her brother, she was able to return to Europe. He supported her in her weakness and she taught him the catechism. The brother became a Catholic during his stay in Rome.

Elizabeth joined the Carmelites at St Brigid's and remained there as a nun in poor health for five years, praying and sacrificing for Sweden and the Nordic countries. By a special indult she became not a Carmelite but a Bridgettine, living in the Carmelite convent.

In 1908 she visited the few existing Bridgettine monasteries in Europe and founded a new branch of the Bridgettines in Rome. The community was approved in 1913. Ten years later she brought her community to Sweden, where Catholic convents were forbidden by law.

She bought a house and set up a "nursing home", circumventing the law against convents. After many attempts, she finally succeeded in obtaining the house of St Brigid in Rome for her order.

Today, Elizabeth's order is particularly active in India. The film below focuses on her early life as described in her memoirs.

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