Euphrasia Eluvathingal

Rosa Eluvathingal, known in religion as Euphrasia of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was born on 17 October 1877 at Kattoor in the Thrissur region of Kerala, then under British rule in India, into a Syro-Malabar Catholic family of the Saint Thomas Christian (Nasrani) community. Her parents were Cherpukaran Antony and Kunjethy Eluvathingal. She was baptized in the parish church at nearby Edathuruthy. From childhood she showed a strong inclination to prayer and to consecrated life. Accounts preserved in the later process for her cause relate that she experienced a childhood vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary that confirmed her desire to become a religious sister. Her father at first opposed the vocation and wished her to marry, but he eventually consented.

In the late nineteenth century she entered the Congregation of the Mother of Carmel, the first indigenous congregation of women religious in the Syro-Malabar Church, whose origins are bound up with the Carmelite renewal in Kerala and with Saint Kuriakose Elias Chavara. She received the religious name Sister Euphrasia of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After formation she was assigned to St. Mary's Convent at Ollur, near Thrissur, which remained her home for the rest of her life. In the early twentieth century she served the community as novice mistress and, for a short period, as superior of the Ollur convent. Thereafter she lived as an ordinary sister, occupied with the hidden work of the house and with a life of prayer rather than with further office.

Among her sisters and the local faithful she became known as a woman of almost continual prayer, especially before the Blessed Sacrament, and was popularly called the Praying Mother. She cultivated devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Blessed Virgin Mary and accepted recurring illness as a share in the Passion. Letters and testimonies gathered for her cause describe her as humble, obedient, given to penance, and ready to offer spiritual counsel to those who sought her. She died at St. Mary's Convent, Ollur, on 29 August 1952 and was buried there. Her tomb soon drew pilgrims from the Syro-Malabar community and beyond.

The cause for her beatification was introduced in the late twentieth century. Pope John Paul II declared her Venerable in 2002. She was beatified on 3 December 2006 at Ollur; Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil, Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Church, presided in the name of Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Francis canonized her on 23 November 2014 in Saint Peter's Square in Rome, together with other blesseds of the universal Church. She is commemorated on 29 August. Her shrine at Ollur remains an important place of pilgrimage in the Syro-Malabar Church and in India.