Feast date: Nov 17

On Nov. 17, the Catholic Church celebrates the life and example of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, a medieval noblewoman who responded to personal tragedy by embracing St. Francis' ideals of poverty and service. A patron of secular Franciscans, she is especially beloved to Germans, as well as the faithful of her native Hungary.

As the daughter of the Hungarian King Andrew II, Elizabeth had the responsibilities of royalty thrust upon her almost as soon as her short life began in 1207. While she was still very young, Elizabeth's father arranged for her to be married to a German nobleman, Ludwig of Thuringia.

The plan forced Elizabeth to separate from her parents while still a child. Adding to this sorrow was the murder of Elizabeth's mother Gertrude in 1213, which history ascribes to a conflict between her own German people and the Hungarian nobles. Elizabeth took a solemn view of life and death from that point on, and found consolation in prayer. Both tendencies drew some ire from her royal peers.

For a time, beginning in 1221, she was happily married. Ludwig, who had advanced to become one of the rulers of Thuringia, supported Elizabeth's efforts to live out the principles of the Gospel even within the royal court. She met with friars of the nascent Franciscan order during its founder's own lifetime, resolving to use her position as queen to advance their mission of charity.

Remarkably, Ludwig agreed with his wife's resolution, and the politically powerful couple embraced a life of remarkable generosity toward the poor. They had three children, two of whom went on to live as as members of the nobility, although one of them –her only son– died relatively young. The third eventually entered religious life and became abbess of a German convent.

In 1226, while Ludwig was attending to political affairs in Italy, Elizabeth took charge of distributing aid to victims of disease and flooding that struck Thuringia. She took charge of caring for the afflicted, even when this required giving up the royal family's own clothes and goods. Elizabeth arranged for a hospital to be built, and is said to have provided for the needs of nearly a thousand desperately poor people on a daily basis.

The next year, however, would put Elizabeth's faith to the test. Her husband had promised to assist the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sixth Crusade, but he died of illness en route to Jerusalem. Devastated by Ludwig's death, Elizabeth vowed never to remarry. Her children were sent away, and relatives heavily pressured her to break the vow.

Undeterred, Elizabeth used her remaining money to build another hospital, where she personally attended to the sick almost constantly. Sending away her servants, she joined the Third Order of St. Francis, seeking to emulate the example of its founder as closely as her responsibilities would allow. Near the end of her life, she lived in a small hut and spun her own clothes.

Working continually with the severely ill, Elizabeth became sick herself, dying of illness in November of 1231. After she died, miraculous healings soon began to occur at her grave near the hospital, and she was declared a saint only four years later.

Pope Benedict XVI has praised her as a “model for those in authority,” noting the continuity between her personal love for God, and her public work on behalf of the poor and sick.

Patronage: Bakers; beggars; brides; charitable societies; charitable workers; charities; countesses; death of children; exiles; falsely accused people; hoboes; homeless people; hospitals; in-law problems; lacemakers; lace workers; nursing homes; nursing services; people in exile; people ridiculed for their piety; Sisters of Mercy; tertiaries; Teutonic Knights; toothache; tramps; widows.

Representation: A queen distributing alms; woman wearing a crown and tending to beggars; woman wearing a crown, carrying a load of roses in her apron or mantle.

 

The United States Conference of Catholics has published the seventh edition of its Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.

The publication follows a vote by the US bishops, at their November meeting, to bar gender-altering treatment at Catholic hospitals.

French officials recalled the 10th anniversary of Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris that left over 100 dead.

Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris said that the bells of Notre-Dame Cathedral and other churches rang for five minutes to invite Parisians to unite in prayer.

Addressing a UN committee meeting on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), a leading Vatican diplomat said that support for the agency “is very important because it sustains the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who otherwise would have no other source of help.”

“The Holy See deplores the attacks on UNRWA facilities, including offices, schools and hospitals,” Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, said on November 13. “Such facilities, together with places of worship must remain inviolable spaces that provide protection and care for civilians.”

Several nations suspended funding of the agency following accusations of links between some employees and the October 2023 attack on Israel. Archbishop Caccia said:

The Holy See considers it vital that the work of UNRWA remains firmly rooted in the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence. These principles must also guide the recruitment, administration and activities of local staff.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Custos of the Holy Land encouraged Christians from around the world to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

“I know what the first objection is: ‘It’s dangerous, there’s war,’” said Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, OFM, the Latin Patriarch. “Well, the war is over. We are not yet in peace, but the war is over, and pilgrimage is absolutely safe.”

In a recent address to a Vatican conference on mysticism, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, explored the question of whether St. John Henry Newman was a mystic.

“There has always been debate as to whether or not he was a ‘mystic,’” Cardinal Semeraro said. If mysticism is “an intimate feeling of God’s presence, he was certainly a mystic; if, instead, it refers to the presence of extraordinary graces, there is no evidence to support this.”

The prelate added, “Mystical graces do not constitute an indispensable condition for holiness; however, the theme of successive divine callings to holiness allows us to place the Christian life in the movement of continuous growth under the influence of divine grace.”

In an encounter with the world of cinema ahead of the 130th anniversary of the first film, Pope Leo XIV expressed appreciation of the art form.

“Good cinema and those who create and star in it have the power to recover the authenticity of imagery in order to safeguard and promote human dignity,” Pope Leo told attendees on November 15. “Do not be afraid to confront the world’s wounds. Violence, poverty, exile, loneliness, addiction and forgotten wars are issues that need to be acknowledged and narrated.”

Prior to the encounter, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education released the titles of the Pope’s four favorite movies: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Sound of Music (1965), Ordinary People (1980), and Life Is Beautiful (1997).

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, was Pope Leo’s legate to the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompei as it marked the 150th anniversary of its beginnings: the arrival of the Marian image venerated there.

Paying tribute to the shrine as a place “of hope, prayer, and mercy,” Cardinal Parolin contrasted the Blessed Virgin Mary’s haste at the Visitation—an “interior haste, born of the heart and a profound urge to recount the great works of God”—with the “superficial haste of those who allow themselves to be overwhelmed by activism.”

The shrine, Cardinal Parolin added, was born of St. Bartolo Longo’s own interior haste. After experiencing “a profound interior crisis,” the saint found in the Virgin Mary “the sure path to God, the peace that the world could not offer him,” and felt the urgency of proclaiming that “the Lord is near, loves every man, and nothing is lost.”

Father Carmelo De Palma (1876-1961), a diocesan priest known as the “hero of the confessional,” was beatified in Bari, Italy, on November 15.

“In the many and varied duties of his priestly life, he always aimed to sanctify himself and others, practicing a constant asceticism of conformity to Christ, who for him was truly the way, the truth, and the life,” wrote Father Romano Gambalunga, the postulator of his cause.

Blessed Carmelo De Palma “was a diocesan priest who died in 1961 after a life generously spent in the ministry of Confession and spiritual accompaniment,” Pope Leo said the day after his beatification. “May his witness inspire priests to give themselves unreservedly to the service of God’s holy people.”

Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica yesterday, the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time and 9th World Day of the Poor.

“So many forms of poverty oppress our world! First and foremost are material forms of poverty, but there are also many moral and spiritual situations of poverty, which often affect young people in a particular way,” he preached. “The tragedy that cuts across them all is loneliness. It challenges us to look at poverty in an integral way, because while it is certainly necessary at times to respond to urgent needs, we also must develop a culture of attention, precisely in order to break down the walls of loneliness.”

“In this Jubilee of the Poor, let us be inspired by the witness of the saints who served Christ in the most needy and followed him on the path of humility and self-denial,” the Pope added, citing St. Benedict Joseph Labre. (Yesterday was the final day of the three-day Jubilee of the Poor.)

Following the Mass and his Sunday Angelus address, the Pope shared lunch with 1,300 impoverished people in Paul VI Audience Hall.