13 Facts About Zdislava Berka

Zdislava Berka, TOSD was a Czech Dominican tertiary and philanthropist.

Zdislava Berka was a wife, mother, and one of the earliest lay Dominicans and is regarded a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

Zdislava Berka's devout mother was born in Sicily and came to Bohemia as "a member of the retinue" of Queen Kunigunde.

Zdislava Berka might have met Ceslaus and Hyacinth of Poland.

Zdislava Berka's family found her, though, and forced her to return home.

Zdislava Berka's husband was a man of violent temper and treated her brutally, but by her patience and gentleness she secured in the end considerable freedom of action in her practices of devotion, her austerities and her many works of charity.

Zdislava Berka devoted herself to the poor, opening the castle doors to those dispossessed by the invasions.

Zdislava Berka had ecstasies and visions, received the Eucharist daily even though it was not a common practice at the time, and performed miracles; one account reports that she even raised the dead.

Ellsberg reported that Zdislava Berka donated to hospitals and built churches with her own hands.

Shortly after founding St Lawrence Priory, Zdislava Berka fell terminally ill; she consoled her husband and children by telling them that she hoped to help them more from the next world than she had ever been able to do in this.

Shortly after her death, Zdislava Berka is reported to have appeared to her grieving husband, dressed in a red robe, and comforted him by giving him a piece of the robe.

Zdislava Berka was beatified by Pope Pius X in 1907 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in the Czech Republic in 1995.

Zdislava Berka is the patron saint of Bohemia, of difficult marriages, and of those who are ridiculed for their piety.