Blessed Elisa Angela Meneguzzi was born on September 12, 1901. Her parents were poor farmers in Padua, Italy. Elisa was always a deeply faithful Catholic, spending hours in prayer and attending Mass every day.
In 1926, she joined the Sisters Congregation of Saint Francis de Sales, taking the name Liduina. She worked as a nurse in a girls’ boarding school before being sent to Ethiopia as a missionary in 1937.
When World War II broke out in 1939, Liduina began tending the sick at a military hospital in Dire-Dawa. Many of the inhabitants were Muslim, but Sister Liduina’s saintly testimony led many of them to convert. She became known as the “ecumenical flame.”
Sister Liduina died of cancer on December 2, 1941, in the hospital where she worked. Her body was returned to the motherhouse of her congregation in 1961, and she was beatified in 2002 by Pope John Paul II.
