Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

Elizabeth was born in 1207 in Hungary, daughter of King Andrew II. At fourteen she married Louis IV of Thuringia and lived a union marked by piety.

She distributed goods to the poor, visited the sick and lepers, and founded a hospital in Marburg where she personally cared for the ill.

Widowed at twenty, she refused remarriage and lived as a Franciscan tertiary, giving herself entirely to those in need.

She died on November 17, 1231, at only twenty-four, exhausted by charity and penance.

She was canonized just four years later, in 1235, by Gregory IX — one of the fastest canonizations of the Middle Ages.

Her liturgical feast is November 17. She is patroness of Franciscan tertiaries and Christian charity.