Irene Stefani
20th-century Italian Catholic nun
Feast: 31 October (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
The Vatican record
- 12 June 2014 — Miracle through their intercession approved (decree list, 2014)
Who they were
Aurelia Mercede Stefani was born at Anfo, near Brescia, on 22 August 1891. After her mother's death she raised her brothers and sisters, then at 20 entered the Consolata Missionary Sisters, taking the name Irene. Sent to Kenya, she nursed African porters in the military field hospitals of the First World War.
From 1920 until her death she worked at Gikondi in Kenya, in the hospital and in the most distant villages; the people called her Nyaatha, the merciful one. She died on 31 October 1930, aged 39, after catching plague from a dying man she was nursing.
The miracles
About 270 villagers — Nipepe, Mozambique — January 1989
During Mozambique's civil war, on 10 January 1989, gunfire broke out during the 6 a.m. Mass at Nipepe. Armed fighters surrounded the church and kept the congregation inside; others from the village took refuge with them, some 270 people in all, shut in for three and a half days in one of the hottest months of the year. With no water, and many children among them, they turned to the small basin of the baptismal font and prayed to Sister Irene. The water in the font did not run out, and it met everyone's needs, to the astonishment even of the fighters outside.
Not a healing but a multiplication, like the water of Cana. Pope Francis spoke of her beatification in Kenya, the day after it, at the Regina Coeli of Pentecost 2015.
Why that counted as sanctity
The case of about 270 villagers was examined by the Church's doctors and theologians and approved as a miracle on 12 June 2014, opening the way to beatification. Beatification followed on 23 May 2015.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography of Blessed Irene Stefani, with the Nipepe account
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — promulgated decrees (causesanti.va), summarised in our own words
- Wikidata Q19358471 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Irene Stefani (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.