06/03/2026
Vatican theologians unanimously voted to advance the cause for beatification and canonization of Sister Blandina Segale, Servant of God on May 28.
"Sister Blandina was born in a small mountain village in Italy in 1850 before emigrating to Cincinnati with her parents and four siblings when she was 4 years old. She joined the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati at 16 and spent several years teaching at schools in Ohio, but she is best known for her decades of work in the Wild Western frontier.
After spending several years teaching at schools in Ohio, S. Blandina, 22, was sent, alone, over the Santa Fe Trail in 1872 to Trinidad in the Colorado Territory. Fortified by her deep love of God and her personal motto, “Do what presents itself and never omit anything because of hardship or repugnance,” she was initiated into frontier life with all its adventures and dangers. Her motto again echoed St. Vincent de Paul’s exhortation: “Let us give ourselves to [God] to do whatever he pleases with us.”
Assigned to teach in the public school, she had encounters with Billy the Kid, Geronimo, and “frontier justice.” Stories abound of how she calmed mobs of armed men from taking the law into their own hands, helped criminals seek forgiveness from their victims, and became a defender of Native Americans and “Mexicans.” Besides her adventures being popularized in novels, television programs, newspapers, magazines, and a comic book, she has also been featured in scholarly works, anthologies, histories, poetry, and dramas. In one instance her story of bravery was told in a 1966 CBS series Death Valley Days episode, “The Fastest Nun in the West,” where she faced a lynch mob to save a man by facilitating reconciliation between him and the man he shot before he died.
In 1877 S. Blandina moved south to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where her remarkable activities continued in myriad ways: working in the school, orphanage, and hospital the Sisters operated, building a trade school for Native Americans, women chiefly, and a home for the elderly, as well as direct relief to the poor. She came to be known in every level of society from members of the state legislature to indigent patients at St. Vincent Hospital. She went on begging trips to mining and railroad camps all over the Southwest to raise money to support St. Vincent Hospital, selling insurance to accident-prone workers to be cared for in case of injury."
One issue regarding the care of the indigent was burial costs. She herself helped make the coffins and enlisted handicapped persons to help her carry the dead to a plot given to them by the Vicar General near San Miguel College for a dignified burial. For this she was given $8 by the authorities. When she confronted the County Commissioner in his newly equipped office, asking for $15 of the $30 he was allotted, he refused – until she told him that the next body would be at his door. Needless to say, she received the $15."
Maria Rosa Segale was born on Jan. 23, 1850, in Cicagna, Italy, a small mountain village near Genoa. Her father, Francesco, was an illiterate peasant, and her mother, Giovanna Malatesta, was a foundling.
