March 26, 1901

The last of seven children of Alexander and Johanna (Szuchy), Teresa Demjanovich was born in Bayonne, NJ. Her parents had emigrated from what is now northeastern Slovakia.

March 31, 1901

Teresa was baptized and confirmed according to the Byzantine-Ruthenian Rite of the Catholic Church in Saint John the Baptist Church in Bayonne.

1905-1917

Teresa and her siblings attended the Bayonne public schools. Additionally she participated in two hours of religious instruction each day in the church basement where she was prepared to participate in the Divine Liturgy and learned the Cyrillic alphabet in order to be able to read prayer books in the Old Slavonic language.

January 1917

Always a superior student, at the age of sixteen Teresa delivered the salutatory address at the commencement exercises at Bayonne High School.

As her mother’s health failed, teenage Teresa’s life was focused on her family, managing the household and caring for her mother.

September 1919

After her mother’s death Teresa followed her family’s wishes and entered the College of Saint Elizabeth, Convent Station, NJ.

June 14, 1923

A Bachelor of Literature degree summa cum laude was awarded to Teresa.

September 1923

Teresa taught Latin and English at the Academy of Saint Aloysius in Jersey City, NJ.

February 11, 1925

Having delayed her entrance to religious life due to her father’s brief illness and subsequent death, Teresa entered the Nazareth Novitiate of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth in Convent Station on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

May 17, 1925

With the reception of the novice’s habit, Teresa took the name Sister Miriam Teresa in honor of the Blessed Mother and Saint Theresa of Avila. She also had a deep devotion to Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, who was canonized that day.

1925 – 1926

As a postulant and a novice Sister Miriam Teresa taught at the Academy of Saint Elizabeth in Convent Station.

During her two years as a Sister of Charity, Sister Miriam Teresa wrote two short plays, letters, meditations, several poems and part of her autobiography.

June 1926

Reverend Benedict Bradley, O.S.B., Sister Miriam Teresa’s spiritual director and confessor, requested that she write the conferences that he would give to the novices. He stated that, “I believed that she enjoyed extraordinary lights, and I knew that she was living an exemplary life…I thought that one day she would be ranked among the saints of God, and I felt it was incumbent upon me to utilize whatever might contribute to an appreciation of her merits after her death.”

Winter 1927

Sister Miriam Teresa’s health failed and she was hospitalized several times.

April 2, 1927

Sister Miriam Teresa took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in articulo mortis in Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, Elizabeth, NJ.

May 8, 1927

Sister Miriam Teresa died in Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, Elizabeth, NJ, after a brief illness.

may-27

A notice signed by Reverend Benedict Bradley, O.S.B., Sister Miriam Teresa’s spiritual director and confessor, was posted on the Sisters’ bulletin board in the Motherhouse. It read, “The conferences which I have been giving to the Sisters were written by Sister Miriam Teresa.”

1928

Greater Perfection: Being the Spiritual Conferences of Sister Miriam Teresa, edited by Reverend Charles C. Demjanovich, was published by P. J. Kenedy & Sons.

1936

Sister Miriam Teresa, a biography written by A Sister of Charity (Sister Mary Zita Geis, S.C.), was published.

December 11, 1945

The Most Reverend Thomas H. McLaughlin, Bishop of Paterson, issued a decree beginning an informative study on the life and virtues of Sister Miriam Teresa.

Summer 1946

The Sister Miriam Teresa League of Prayer was established at Convent Station by Mother M. Benita in order to “honor Our Lord Jesus Christ by spreading the knowledge of Sister Miriam Teresa’s life and mission, and by working for the cause of her beatification.”

1953 – 1954

The Ecclesiastical Curia of the Diocese of Paterson began the three-part Process for Beatification and Canonization.

November 7, 1976

Reverend Monsignor Charles C. Demjanovich, the brother and close friend of Sister Miriam Teresa, died in Saint Mary’s Hospital, Passaic.

May 8 and 9, 1979

On the 52nd anniversary of her death the exhumation, canonical examination and relocation of the remains of Sister Miriam Teresa took place without any expression of public cult. The casket containing Sister Miriam Teresa’s remains was transferred to a crypt in Holy Family Chapel.

June 19, 1980

Pope John Paul II signed a decree introducing the Cause of the Servant of God, Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, as an Apostolic Process.

April 5, 1981

The Stations of the Cross were placed in Nazareth Park. Located in a wooded area at Convent, Nazareth Park displays meditations written by Sister Miriam Teresa.

1999

The Positio super virtutibus was submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The Positio, prepared over a period of ten years by Sister Francis Maria Cassidy, S. C., and Sister Eileen Dolan, S.C., describes the life and virtues of Sister Miriam Teresa.

May 28, 1999

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints decreed the legal validity of the Process for Beatification and Canonization.

May 10, 2012

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints, with the concurrence of Pope Benedict XVI, declared that Sister Miriam Teresa had exercised heroic virtues and is entitled to the title of “Venerable.”

July 12, 2013

After exhaustive study, the cure of eight-year-old Michael Mencer’s irreversible juvenile macular degeneration in the 1960s was accepted as medically inexplicable by panels of ophthalmologists in Rome and in the U.S.A.

December 17, 2013

The Congregation for the Causes of the Saints determined that the miraculous restoration of sight to Michael Mercer occurred by prayer through the intercession of Venerable Sister Miriam Teresa. The Congregation recommended to Pope Francis that Venerable Sister Miriam Teresa be beatified.

October 4, 2014

At the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, NJ, Sister Miriam Teresa was declared “Blessed” during a beatification ceremony presided over by Angelo Cardinal Amato, S.D.B., Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. In recognition of her holy life.

Blessed Miriam Teresa now is deemed worthy of public religious veneration by the local church. Other concelebrants included Theodore Cardinal McCarrick of Washington, D.C., Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, NJ, Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, NJ, and Bishop Kurt R. Burnette of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Passaic for the Ruthenians.