Maria Restituta Kafka

Maria Restituta Kafka (1 May 1894 – 30 March 1943) was an Austrian nurse of Czech descent and religious sister of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity (Sorores Franciscanae a Caritate Christiana). Executed by the government in Nazi-run Austria, she is honoured as a virgin and martyr in the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1998.

Life Early life She was born Helene Kafka in Husovice, near Brno, on 1 May 1894, the sixth daughter of Anton Kafka, a shoemaker, and his wife, Maria Stehlík. In 1913 she became a nurse at the municipal hospital in the Lainz neighborhood of the city.

While working as a nurse, Kafka met members of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity and entered their congregation the following year, at the age of 20. She was given the religious name of Maria Restituta, after the 4th-century martyr Restituta.

Conflict and martyrdom

The Mödling hospital was not spared the effects of the 1938 Anschluss, in which Germany annexed Austria. Kafka was very vocal in her opposition to the new regime, which had immediately begun to implement the Nuremberg Laws established by the Nazi Party in Germany upon its acquisition of power. She called Hitler a "madman" and said of herself that "a Viennese cannot keep her mouth shut". When a new hospital wing was constructed, Kafka kept to traditional Catholic practice and hung a crucifix in every room. The Nazi authorities demanded that the crosses be taken down, threatening her dismissal, but she refused.

After her imprisonment on Ash Wednesday 1942, Restituta Kafka spent over one year on death row. On 30 March 1943, she was beheaded in the Vienna Regional Court.

In Restituta Kafka's honour, the western half of Weyprechtgasse, a lane running before Mödling Hospital, was renamed Schwester-Maria-Restituta-Gasse. Also there is a park named in her honour in her native Husovice: Park Marie Restituty. Near the location of her birthplace a church dedicated to her was consecrated in September 2020.