Blessed Emma Üffing

Eurythimia Üffing (born as Emma Üffing, 8 April 1914 – 9 September 1955) was a German religious sister of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin and Our Lady of Sorrows. She was beatified on 7 October, 2001. Üffing was born to farmers, on whose small farm she worked until she was 17. Later she worked in the kitchen of the hospital of Saint Anne in Hopsten which was run by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin and Our Lady of Sorrows. There she decided to enter the religious life as a postulant on 23 July. Üffing is said to have assumed her religious name Maria Euthymia in honor of the mother superior Eurythmia in Hopsten. After she made her initial vows she sent a letter to her mother in which she said: "I found Him who my heart loves; I want to hold Him and never let him go". Üffing was sent to various German hospitals and she also tended to ill people during World War II. She tended to foreigners who were admitted into these hospitals such as Russian and British people and was hailed as an "Angel of love" due to her affectionate care of the patients under her care. In October 1936 she was assigned to work at Saint Vincent's Hospital in Dinslaken and she graduated from her nursing program with special distinctions on 3 September 1939 - not long after the start of World War II with the Polish invasion. Üffing worked as a nurse during the conflict and in 1943 was assigned to nurse prisoners of war and foreign workers who had infectious diseases and she tended to the likes of British and Ukrainian people though Polish and Russian foreigners would later flood in. The conclusion of the war in 1945 saw her assigned to the washrooms of the Dinslaken hospital and later on 14 January 1948 saw her sent to work in her order's motherhouse and the Saint Raphael Clinic in Münster. She was ill for a brief period of time after contracting a high fever on 24 March 1945 while working.