Mother Ricarda Hambrough – candidate for sainthood
Our brother Daniel, from the Jaffa kehilla, has drawn our attention to a nun from England, Mother Ricarda Beauchamp Hambrough, who played a vital role in saving 60 Jews in her convent in Rome during the Second World War.
Mother Ricarda was born in England in 1887 and at the age of 4 was received into the Catholic Church together with her parents. At the age of 24, in 1912, she joined the religious congregation of the Bridgettines and during the Second World War she served as the right hand of the abbess of the convent in Rome, Mother Mary-Elizabeth (already beatified, the step before recognizing her as a saint).
The Bridgettine Sisters explained that they received instructions from Pope Pius XII to open their convent to all those fleeing the Nazis – Jews and also Poles and Communists. According to witnesses, 60 Italian Jews found refuge in the convent and Mother Ricarda was a central figure in the attempts to save them from the hands of the Gestapo at the time they had begun to send the Jews of Rome to the death camps.
Mother Ricarda passed away in 1966, at the age of 79. The process by which the Catholic Church will recognize her heroic virtues began in February 2009.
Read an article about the courageous nun
Memorial to the Jesuit Righteous Among the Nations