Homing Brigittines

Some years ago in Rome. King Gustaf V of Sweden and his Queen Victoria paid a visit to an ancient house on the Campo di Fiori near the bank of the Tiber. Good Lutherans as they must be by law, the monarchs of Sweden were interested in the house because there, in 1373, died a great and pious Swedish woman, St. Bridget. In the chapel they viewed relics of the founder of the Brigittine Order. Then Queen Victoria spied a nun in a habit different from those of the barefoot Carmelites who occupied the house. She spoke to her, was surprised when the nun replied in Swedish. Further surprised were Gustaf and Victoria to learn that the nun, named Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad, was working to rebuild the Brigittine Order.

"Why aren't you at work in Sweden?" asked the King of a country where, since 1523, all Catholic nunneries and monasteries have been outlawed.

"If Your Majesty. ... If the law could only be repealed . . ." replied Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad.

Promising nothing, Gustaf V departed. Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad, who had studied nursing in Manhattan, obtained special permission from Pope Pius X to become a Brigittine. collected around her a score of sisters, three of them Swedish. But not until recently did King Gustaf get the first exception ever made in Sweden's stern anti-monastic law. And not until last week were the Brigittines able to return to Sweden to settle in Vadstena where their original mother house was founded.

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