Mother Riccarda Bus!

The author of the St Mary Magdalen Choir Blog has alerted us to the fact that Brighton and Hove Buses have dedicated a bus to Mother Riccarda, the heroic nun who hid both Jews and runaway Nazis in Rome, who was baptised in St Mary Magdalen Church, Brighton and whose cause at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the stage of 'Servant of God'.

A cause for canonisation is one thing...but your name on a Brighton bus?! It doesn't get much better than that!

According to the Brighton and Hove Bus webpage...

'Connections with Brighton and Hove: A Brighton nun who saved the lives of more than 60 people from Nazi death camps during the Second World War may be made a saint. Mother Riccarda Beauchamp Hamborough hid Jews, Communists and Poles in her Rome convent. By her courageous action, she prevented them from being taken to the gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1943. She was helped by her superior, Blessed Mary Elizabeth Hasselblad. Pope Benedict XVI made her a "servant of God" in a ceremony in 2010. She is now two steps away from sainthood. The Church will now be looking for a divine sign to help her towards the next stage. This will have to be evidence of a miracle connected with her since her death. Mother Riccarda was born in London in 1887 and was baptised at St Mary Magdalene Church in Upper North Street, Brighton. Little is known about her early years in Brighton before she moved to Rome aged 24 to become a nun. She died aged 79 in 1966 and her body was laid to rest in the Rome convent. Meanwhile there are plans for a shrine in her honour in Brighton.'

Wanted: Miracles!

Mother Riccarda's bus goes to Brighton Marina. I might contact the Bus company and produce a load of Mother Riccarda leaflets so people can learn about her heroic and saintly life and spread knowledge of the Faith and of how jolly kind and goodly this lady, among others, was, in responding to Pope Pius XII's request to please hid Jews in Rome from the evil Nazi regime. Obviously, the bus company will be wanting a small reliquary on the Mother Riccarda bus somewhere!