Zdenka Cecília Schelingová

Zdenka Cecília Schelingová was born on 24 December 1916 in the village of Krivá in the Orava region, then part of Austria-Hungary and now in northern Slovakia. She grew up in a large, devoutly Catholic family and from youth felt drawn to religious life. In 1936 she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross at Podunajské Biskupice near Bratislava, receiving the religious name Zdenka. She made her first profession of vows the following year and trained as a nurse. She was later assigned to hospital work and served in the surgical department of the State Hospital in Bratislava.

After the Communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the Catholic Church was subjected to systematic persecution: religious houses were suppressed, bishops and priests were imprisoned, and the faithful were closely watched by the secret police. Sister Zdenka continued her nursing under these conditions. In early 1952 a Catholic priest who had been arrested by the State Security was being held under guard in the hospital where she worked and faced transfer to harsher imprisonment. At great personal risk she assisted in his escape from the hospital.

For this act she was arrested on 29 February 1952. During interrogation she was subjected to brutal torture. In a subsequent show trial she was convicted of treason and sentenced to twelve years in prison. She was held in several prisons, where beatings, harsh conditions, and other ill-treatment, including exposure to radiation, gravely damaged her health. She developed cancer that biographies of her life have long attributed to the treatment she received in custody.

On account of her terminal illness she was released from prison in April 1955. She died a few months later, on 31 July 1955, in Trnava, at the age of thirty-eight. The Catholic Church regards her as a martyr of the Communist persecution in Czechoslovakia. Pope John Paul II beatified her on 14 September 2003 during an apostolic visit to Slovakia, at a ceremony held in Bratislava. Her liturgical memorial is kept on 31 July.