Blessed Maria Merkert

Maria Luise Merkert (21 September 1817 in Neisse, Prussia - 14 November 1872 in Neisse) was a German Roman Catholic professed religious and the co-foundress of the Sisters of Saint Elizabeth. Merkert worked to help those in need including the poor and ill and tended to them with her older sister until her sudden death and the death of her other companions - this left Merkert alone to found and maintain her order as its first Superior General from 1859 until her death. Merkert's beatification was celebrated under Pope Benedict XVI in Poland on 30 September 2007 with Cardinal José Saraiva Martins presiding over the celebration on the pope's behalf. Maria Luise Merkert was born on 21 September 1817 in Neisse, Prussia in the Province of Silesia as the second and last daughter born to the pious middle-class Anton Merkert and Maria Barbara Pfitzner; her sole sibling was older sister Matilde. Merkert was baptized on 22 September 1817. Her father died when she was nine months old on 21 June 1818. Merkert and her older sister Matilde attended the local girls' school. Merkert assisted her mother during her illness prior to her death from tuberculosis on 11 July 1842. From this experience she decided to serve the poor as well as the sick and abandoned. That September she and Matilde as well as Frances Werner - on the advice of her confessor - joined Clara Wolff (a Third Order Franciscan) in her charitable work of serving the poor and sick in their homes and titled their movement as the "Association of Sisters for the Assistance of Abandoned Sick under the Protection of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus" on 27 September 1842. Also on 27 September 1842 she had attended mass with her companions and all of them vowed before an image of the Sacred Heart to aid all those people in need.