Maria Restituta Kafka

Maria Restituta Kafka was an Austrian nurse of Czech descent and a Franciscan sister who was executed under Nazi rule. Born Helene Kafka near Brno in 1894, she grew up in Vienna, began work as a nurse at the Lainz municipal hospital in 1913 and entered the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity the following year. From 1919 she worked at the hospital in Mödling, where she became its leading surgical nurse. After the 1938 Anschluss she spoke openly against the regime and refused an order to remove the crucifixes she had hung in the new hospital wing. The Gestapo arrested her in February 1942, and in October a People's Court sentenced her to death for favouring the enemy and conspiracy to commit high treason; she refused an offer of release if she left her convent. She cared for fellow prisoners and was beheaded in Vienna on 30 March 1943. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1998.