First Anniversary of Beatification

Sisters of Charity mark first anniversary of beatification of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich

CONVENT STATION  Bishop Serratelli celebrated Mass Sunday, Oct. 4 at Holy Family Chapel here at the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity to mark the first anniversary of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich’s beatification in the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark on Oct. 4, 2014.

The beatification was a historic day because it was the first beatification to take place on U.S. soil. A native of Bayonne and a student at the College of St. Elizabeth in Convent Station, which is operated by the Sisters of Charity, Blessed Miriam Demjanovich answered her call to become a religious sister on Feb. 11, 1925 and entered the Sisters of Charity. She died at the age of 26, two years after becoming a religious sister. She was beatified following the Vatican’s approval that the complete cure to full eyesight of 8-year-old Michael Mencer, who had lost his eyesight due to macular degeneration in 1963, was due to Blessed Miriam Teresa’s intercession.

Following the Mass, the Sisters of Charity presented the Bishop with a first-class relic of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich. The Bishop blessed the sisters with the relic at the Mass and later that day, he blessed college students at a Mass in the Prince of Peace Chapel at William Paterson University in Haledon with the relic when he celebrated Mass there.