Marija Bernadeta Banja

Marija Bernadeta Banja, born Terezija Banja in 1912 in Veliki Grđevac in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia (then part of Austria-Hungary), was a Roman Catholic religious sister of the Congregation of the Daughters of Divine Charity (Kćeri Božje ljubavi). She received the religious name Marija Bernadeta upon entering the congregation. By 1941 she belonged to the community of sisters stationed at Pale, near Sarajevo, in Bosnia, where the congregation maintained a house and apostolate.

In December 1941, during the Second World War, Chetnik forces attacked the Pale area after the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia. Together with four fellow sisters of the same congregation—Jula Ivanišević, Berchmana Leidenix, Krizina Bojanc, and Antonija Fabjan—she fled with other refugees toward Goražde. The group was captured. The elderly Sister Berchmana, unable to continue, was separated from the others and later died. The remaining four, including Sister Bernadeta, were taken to Goražde and confined.

On the night of 15 December 1941 the four sisters were killed. Accounts accepted in the later ecclesiastical investigation of their deaths hold that they were subjected to violence and then murdered, after which their bodies were thrown into the Drina River and were never recovered. Sister Bernadeta was twenty-nine years old. The five religious became known collectively as the Drina Martyrs (Drinske mučenice).

Their cause was examined as a case of martyrdom in odium fidei. Pope Benedict XVI approved their beatification, which was celebrated in Sarajevo on 24 September 2011 by Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, acting in the pope’s name. Their liturgical memorial is observed on 15 December. They are venerated as blessed martyrs of the Catholic Church; they have not been canonized.