Holy Nurses
Dr. Gosia Brykczynska
ISBN 9781784698522
eISBN 9781784698812
ASIN B0GZ4N5K7R
CTS Booklet B784
This an a companion volume Holy Scientists by Fr Douglas McGonagle were announced at the same time. I immediately added both of them to my wish list. It was a bit of a wait for the eBook edition but it was so worth it. This is the first volume I have read by Dr. Gosia Brykczynska, and it is her first for the Catholic Truth Society, though another volume released recently The Real Midwife of Auschwitz: The Life of Stanisława Leszczyńska. But I believe she has three other books available.
Over the last several years, I have read many books from the Catholic Truth Society, in fact over 460 of them as of the reading of this volume; many read more than once; this all since the spring of 2018. Most were good reads; some were great reads; and a few are exceptional. And this was an excellent little volume.
The description of this volume is:
“Holy Nurses tells the remarkable stories of nine modern women whose faith led them to become qualified nurses and to offer their expert care to people experiencing tremendous suffering through infirmity, sickness or war and conflict.
The first in a new CTS series focusing on saints and blesseds and other holy people who found their vocation in a secular profession, Holy Nurses tells the remarkable stories of nine modern women whose faith led them to become qualified nurses and to offer their expert care to people experiencing tremendous suffering through infirmity, sickness or war and conflict. Some women plied their skills with quiet, simple devotion, but in some dramatic cases, the Catholic nurses accepted danger, injury, assault, and even death in order to practice their skills where they were most needed.
Dr Gosia Brykczyńska, herself a nurse, teacher of nurses, and the current European President of CICIAMS (International Association of Catholic Nurses), tells these remarkable stories in a way that highlights the vocational aspects of the nursing profession and the virtues of the holy nurses for whom nursing was a road to Christ.”
The chapters and sections in the book are:
The Mystery of Holiness
Bl. Maria Pilar Gullon Yturriaga 1911-1936, Bl. Octavia Iglesias Blanco 1894-1936 and Bl. Olga Pérez-Monteserín Nuñez 1913-1936 Red Cross Nursing Auxiliary Volunteers
Bl. Sr Restituta Kafka 1894-1943 A Resolute Anti-Fascist Religious
Bl. Sr Mary Euthymia Üffing 1914-1955 A Gentle Nurse
Bl. Sr Zdenka Schelingová 1916-1955 A Victim of Communism
St Elizabeth Hesselblad 1870-1957 Restorer of the Bridgettine Order
Bl. Hanna Chrzanowska 1902-1973 Founder of Parish Nursing
Bl. Leonella Sgorbati 1940-2006 Consolata Missionary Martyr
Further Reading
Further General Resources
About the author we are informed:
“Dr Gosia Brykczyńska is a bilingual humanities graduate, who wrote her dissertation on leprosy in Siberia. She was the Royal College of Nursing representative on the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Ethics Advisory Committee. She is currently the European President of CICIAMS (International Association of Catholic Nurses). She is a Consecrated Virgin in the Diocese of Westminster.”
I highlighted a few passages while reading this volume, some of them are:
“We know from St Jerome in the 4th century that St Fabiola, his contemporary and friend, set up a hospital in Rome in order to better look after ill and diseased patients. Thereafter, nursing care of the sick became a recognised act of mercy.”
“Though lazar houses for people with leprosy were efficiently run by various nursing religious from the tenth century onwards, mental illness and psychiatric disorders were not recognised as requiring any mean-ingful intervention until relatively recently. Thankfully, holy men of compassionate vision, like St John of God (1495-1550) in Granada, Spain and St Camillus (1550-1614) in Italy, did set up care for those with psychiatric disorders.”
“Wherever there was pain, distress and infirmity religious nursing orders attempted to alleviate the suffering, following the Gospel example of the Good Samaritan, though the modern nursing profession dates from only the second half of the nineteenth century.”
“We are all called to holiness–indeed if we are to get to heaven and see the face of God we need to be holy.”
“The formal recognition of holiness by the Church is a bottom up process. It is the ordinary Christian who, recognising holiness in the other, petitions the Church to officially confirm this God-given grace.”
“The Church does not “make” saints–it merely affirms the wishes of the people and the evident “wish” of God; the latter is manifested by approved miracles and graces attributed to the holy person.”
“In this short booklet, nine different individuals have been selected to demonstrate the mystery of holiness as lived and experienced by very ordinary women who worked as nurses. They all died within the last one hundred years and attended a school of nursing or a period of nurse training or in one case undertook an approved Red Cross short nursing course.”
“The nurses included in this volume were normal women who did their nursing work in an extra-ordinary way, seeing Christ in their patients and bringing Christ to their patients.”
“These three women had volunteered to care for wounded soldiers, but paid with their lives for being true to their faith and to their Christian principles. María Pilar Gullón Yturriaga was twenty five years old, Olga Pérez-Monteserín Núñez was twenty three years old and Octavia Iglesias Blanco was forty one years old when they were killed in 1936.”
“Sr Restituta, a surgical nurse, is one of several people to be recognised by the Church as having lived their Christian lives to a heroic degree and having died for their faith during the atrocities of the Second World War as victims of the Nazi regime.”
“She was tried and formally sentenced to death, the only religious sister in Greater Germany to be formally sentenced to death by a Nazi court. In all she was to spend a year in prison, with five months on death row. She was executed at the express orders of Hitler’s secretary Martin Bormann who wished to make an example of her and frighten any would be conspirators.”
“Bl. Sr Restituta wrote from prison, ‘no matter what is taken from us, no one can take from us the faith we have in our heart. In this way we can build an altar in our own heart.’ Sr Restituta’s body was never released by the Nazi executioners and has never been recovered.”
“Such was the case with Sr Euthymia, a dedicated nursing sister, who, in spite of being an excellent nurse and really enjoying the work, was nonetheless asked by her superiors to leave her nursing duties behind and take up work in the hospital laundry.”
“It was this childlike but quite heroic surrender to God which was to cost her all that she had to give–her life–and which was to characterise her spirituality. Her road of quiet obscurity, so complete that only God’s love shone through it, was to be her chosen way to heaven. In this way it was reminiscent of the Little Way spirituality of St Thérèse of Lisieux.”
“Sr Zdenka is the first Slovakian religious sister to be beatified. Pope St John Paul II said during her beatification ceremony in Bratislava in 2003 that she was a radiant example, ‘of faithfulness in times of harsh and ruthless religious persecution.’ Sr Zdenka, a young Slovakian nursing sister, was one of the first Slovakian martyrs of the Communist era.”
“There is a saying that once a nurse always a nurse; and it is reassuring that God used Elizabeth’s many talents for His own purposes in order to accomplish His other heavenly plans.”
“These lay Catholic individuals found their vocation and purpose in life working as professional nurses. Bl. Hanna is the first such lay, registered nurse to be beatified.”
“In 1957, due to her anti-communist and clearly Catholic approach to life, she was dismissed from her nurse-teacher’s post and given the position of director of the Psychiatric School of Nursing in Kobierzyn outside Kraków.”
“Kenya, while she was still regional superior, she commented on the news about the Trappist martyrs of Algiers that, ‘Martyrdom, the ordinary one of every day, is part of our life. The martyrdom, with the shedding of blood, only if God will ask it of us.’ When God does ask us, it is always as an intimate personal invitation and He waits patiently for our freely given response.”
I hope those quotes give you a feel for this excellent volume. This volume is a fairly easy read, anyone with a secondary education could easily work through it. It does an excellent job of introducing us to these 9 women of faith who all served as nurses, and some of whom paid the ultimate price for their faith. The section at the end Further Reading with resources gives as at least 2 resources for each of them and a mix of Books, articles and online resources.
This book is a great read. I am thankful for the work that the CTS does, and for their effort to stay up to date on eBook editions. With my dual form of dyslexia and my son having eye tracking issues I consider them essential, especially with adaptive technology. I am thankful for this volume, for another by Dr. Brykczynska that is available from the CTS, and for this being the first volume in a new series. I hope we are blessed with many more volumes in this series. This is a great read I can easily recommend!
Note: This book is part of a series of reviews: 2026 Catholic Reading Plan! For other reviews of books from the Catholic Truth Society click here.
Books by Dr. Gosia Brykczynska:
A Franciscan Odyssey: Autobiography of WW II Prisoner, Soldier, Priest and Foster Parent
Ethical and Philosophical Aspects of Nursing Children and Young People
Memoir Blessed Hanna Chrzanowska
The Real Midwife of Auschwitz: The Life of Stanisława Leszczyńska
..
