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Maria Katharina Kasper
German nun and saint of Catholic church (1820-1898)
Feast: 2 February (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
The Vatican record
- 6 March 2018 — Miracle through their intercession approved (decree list, 2018)
Who they were
Katharina Kasper was born in 1820 in Dernbach, in the Westerwald region of Germany, into a farming family. She worked in the fields, read the Bible, took the village children on pilgrimage to a nearby shrine and visited the poor and sick. She founded the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ to serve Christ in the poor, and in her humility refused even to be called their foundress, saying that God alone was.
She died on 2 February 1898, the feast of the Presentation, after a heart attack a few days earlier.
The miracles
A religious brother — Madhya Pradesh, India — 25 November 2011
A brother of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart suffered multiple injuries on 25 November 2011, with a severe head injury, deep coma, raised pressure in the skull, widespread damage to the brain's nerve fibres and signs of brain-stem injury, as well as chest, abdominal and neck-spine injuries. He recovered, and on 5 October 2017 the Vatican's medical board found unanimously that his healing was complete, lasting and scientifically inexplicable.
The miracle for her beatification was approved on 20 January 1977. Her page also records that at her death a sister who was almost blind and had been in a wheelchair for years heard Mother Katharina call her, stood up, and was healed.
Why that counted as sanctity
Beatification followed on 16 April 1978 by Paul VI. The case of a religious brother was examined by the Church's doctors and theologians and approved as a miracle on 6 March 2018, opening the way to canonisation. Canonisation followed on 14 October 2018 by Francis.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography of St Katharina Kasper, with the miracles
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — promulgated decrees (causesanti.va), summarised in our own words
- Wikidata Q108332 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Maria Katharina Kasper (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.