Kerala’s Mother Petra on road to sainthood

(June 10, 2009): Another Catholic nun is on the road to sainthood in southern India’s Kerala State. Mother Petra the foundress of the Dena Seva Sabha, DSS in Pattuvam, will be officially declared a Servant of God by Bishop Varghese Chakalakal of Kannur, during a solemn Mass in the chapel of the congregation’s monastery on Sunday, June 14. This is the first step in the process of making Mother Petra a saint of the Catholic Church. The diocesan tribunal for the cause of Mother Petra was established in November 2008 with DSS Sister Vandana as postulator.
Born in 1924 in Germany, Petra (then Catherine) was professed as a member of the Ursuline Congregation in 1957. She began her career as a teacher; but touched by the stories of the miserable sufferings of lepers and other poor people in India, she came to Kerala’s Caritas Hospital in Kottayam. There, she was inspired to begin a new congregation of sisters, who would live in poverty and serve the poor and the sick, especially the leprosy patients.
The DSS Congregation was erected in 1968 in a village called Pattuvam. Mother Petra met with her death in 1976 in a tragic car accident. In a short span of eight years, Mother Petra was able to give shape to one of the most modern congregations in Kerala, which is doing immense good to the poor and the sick.