Blessed Mariam Vattalil (Sister Rani Maria), Martyr of Indore

Who was Blessed Mariam Vattalil?

Blessed Mariam Vattalil, better known as Sister Rani Maria, was a Franciscan Clarist nun from Kerala who gave twenty years to the poor of north and central India and was killed for it. On February 25, 1995, a hired killer stabbed her to death on a bus near Indore. The Church recognized her death as martyrdom, and she was beatified in Indore in 2017. We keep her feast on February 25.

Her story does not end with the knife. Her own family went to the prison, forgave the man who killed her, and took him in as one of their own. When Pope Francis spoke of her the day after the beatification, he remembered one thing above all: "She was so good. They called her 'the sister of the smile.'"

The life of Sister Rani Maria

A Syro-Malabar girl from Kerala

Mariam Vattalil was born on January 29, 1954, at Pulluvazhy in the Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly, to Catholic parents of the Syro-Malabar rite. She was baptized on February 5, 1954, in the local parish of St. Thomas. The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints describes her as a child inclined to prayer, study and hard work.

On July 3, 1972, at Kidangoor, she entered the Franciscan Clarist Congregation, the same community to which St. Alphonsa, India's first canonized woman saint, had belonged. She made her first profession on May 1, 1974, and took the name Rani Maria. Rani means "queen."

Twenty years in the missions

In 1975 she was sent to the missions of northern India, and she never went back to Kerala to stay. She made her perpetual vows on May 22, 1980. She worked first at Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh and then at Satna, and in May 1992 she was assigned to the convent at Udainagar in the Diocese of Indore, in Madhya Pradesh.

Udainagar was a poor rural area where many families had fallen into the hands of moneylenders. Sister Rani Maria began to organize the villagers into self-help groups so they could save, borrow from one another and break out of debt. According to the statement the Catholic Church in Madhya Pradesh released for her beatification, this angered the rich and powerful men who profited from the old system. She was threatened several times and kept on.

The martyrdom of Blessed Rani Maria

On the morning of February 25, 1995, Sister Rani Maria boarded a bus at Udainagar for Indore, the first stage of a journey home to Kerala. On the road, a man named Samundar Singh, who had been hired to kill her, attacked her with a knife in front of the other passengers. The Dicastery records fifty-four stab wounds, and says she died repeating the name of Jesus. She was forty-one.

Thousands of people, many of them not Catholic, came to pay their respects. Her funeral Mass was offered in the cathedral of Indore on February 27, and the funeral procession then traveled about a hundred kilometers back to Udainagar, where she was buried.

The Dicastery's biography closes with a prayer she had written for herself, which we give in English from its Italian text:

Father, I am weak and do not belong to the world of heroes; help me to understand that you use what is weak in the world to confound the strong. Bless my humble efforts, so that I may give glory to your name with my life.

• Approved: her martyrdom. Pope Francis approved the decree on March 23, 2017, and she was beatified as a martyr, without a miracle. A miracle is needed for her canonization.

The forgiveness of her killer

Samundar Singh was convicted and sentenced to death; the sentence was later commuted to life in prison. Sister Rani Maria's younger sister, Sister Selmy, also a Franciscan Clarist, went to see him there. According to Catholic News Service, she formally accepted him as her "brother" and helped make his early release possible; her parents and Church officials signed the declarations the court required, and he was freed in 2006. In January 2007 he traveled with Sister Selmy to Kerala and apologized to her parents.

He was photographed praying at the tomb in Udainagar in 2015, and he celebrated her beatification. "My life has changed," he told the Press Trust of India in 2017. "Sister Selmi and her relatives too are my family and their affection and love has totally changed my life."

Beatification

Cardinal Angelo Amato beatified Sister Rani Maria at a Mass in Indore on November 4, 2017, with all four of India's cardinals present. At the Angelus the next day, Pope Francis prayed, in words we translate from the Italian, that her sacrifice would be "a seed of faith and of peace, especially in the land of India."

Symbols of Blessed Mariam Vattalil in art

Sister Rani Maria lived in the age of photography, and no old artwork of her exists. Devotional images in India show her as her sisters remember her:

• The white habit and veil of the Franciscan Clarist Sisters, often with a small crucifix;
• The martyr's palm, for her death on the bus near Indore;
• A rosary, for her life of prayer;
• A wide smile, which Pope Francis himself recalled.

Feast day and prayer

We keep the feast of Blessed Mariam Vattalil on February 25, the day of her death, especially in the Diocese of Indore, in Kerala and among the Franciscan Clarists. See the feast day calendar.

We know of no traditional prayer to her that we can quote. Let us ask Blessed Rani Maria to pray for the poor who are trapped by debt, for everyone who works for justice at risk to their lives, and for the grace to forgive those who have wronged us, as her family did. Blessed Rani Maria, pray for us.