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Sister Blandina, or Sister Blandina Segale, or Servant of God Sr. Blandina Segale née Rosa Maria Rye (Cicagna, Liguria, Italy, 23 May 1850 - Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 23 February 1941) was an Italian religious sister and missionary who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century and until the 1930s in the United States. During her missionary work, she met, among others, Billy the Kid and the leaders of the Native American tribes of the Apache and Comanche. She worked as an educator and social worker who worked in Ohio, Colorado and New Mexico assisting American Indians, Hispanic settlers and European immigrants.〔(The Nun Who Took on Billy the Kid - Katie O'Brien ) Catholic Heritage〕 ==Biography== Sister Segale, a member of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, came to Trinidad, Colorado, in 1877 to teach poor children. She was later transferred to Santa Fe, where she co-founded public and Catholic schools throughout the United States. During her time in New Mexico, she worked with the poor, the sick and immigrants.〔 She also advocated on behalf of Hispanics and Native Americans who were losing their land to swindlers. She created the still in operation St. Joseph's Children's Hospital in Albuquerque, a social service agency. Among her many philanthropic projects, Sr. Segale founded St Joseph Hospital in Albuquerque before returning to Cincinnati in 1897 to start Santa Maria Institute, which served recent European immigrants.〔 The Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe is leading the movement to canonize Sister Blandina Segale. Sr. Segale is the first individual in New Mexico's 400-year history with the Roman Catholic Church to have a cause declared for beatification and canonization.〔 Her encounters with Old West outlaws later became the stuff of legend and were the subject of an episode of the CBS series Death Valley Days. The episode, called ''The Fastest Nun in the West'', focused on her efforts to save a man from a lynch mob.〔 According to one story, she received a tip that Billy the Kid was coming to her town to scalp the four doctors who had refused to treat his friend’s gunshot wound. Segale nursed the friend to health, and when Billy came to Trinidad, Colorado, to thank her, she asked him to abandon his violent plan. He agreed. Another story says Billy the Kid and his gang attempted to rob the covered wagon in which she was traveling on the frontier. When he looked inside, he saw Segale. At that, Billy the Kidd simply tipped his hat and rode off in deference to her safety and the debt he owed her. Many of the tales she wrote in letters to her sister were later published in a book entitled At the End of the Santa Fe Trail.〔〔 She moved at age four with his family to Cincinnati.〔Insight: Piero Bevilacqua - Andreina De Clementi - Emilio Franzina, History Italian emigration, Donzelli Editore, 2002, cited in Google.books〕 On 8 December 1868 she took religious vows entering the convent of the Sisters of Charity〔Sisters of Charity, Santamaria-cincy.htm〕 with the name of Blandina in memory of St. Blandina, martyred in 177 during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. She taught in the schools of Steubenville and Dayton, OH when, in 27 November 1872, at the age of twenty-two years, she was sent as serve as a missionary to Trinidad, Colorado. She traveled alone on dusty trails and the rails through the unexplored lands of the far south-west finally reaching Trinidad, a frontier mining town, on 9 December 1872. Her first evangelical action was to fight against the common practice of lynching. She came to learn that a member of Billy the Kid's gang was seriously wounded, and was left alone to die in a shack, Sr Blandina, went to him and as she examined the wound, spoke harshly to his persecutors saying, "I see that with a hard head that you find yourself not able to kill him with one shot to the head." Without another word, she treated the bandit and saved the man's life. On the way to Albuquerque and Santa Fe In December, 1873, Sr Blandina received a letter from her Mother Superior directing her to move to Santa Fe in the religious settlement. Despite the scarcity of funding and resources, she built several schools and orphanages, continued to visit the mines in the area and railway construction sites to minister to the people there. She managed to collect funds for the construction of the St. Vincent Hospital and for the care of indigent.〔See: Kelly Pounds, The Awakening Fire - (EN) Kellscreations.com〕 She visited and took care of Billy the Kid and other prisoners confined in the main prison in New Mexico.〔Katie O'Brien, The Nun Who Took on Billy the Kid (EN) Catholicmedia.us , 2006.〕 In 1882, Sr Blandina was entrusted with the reconstruction of the destroyed monastery in Albuquerque, NM. She attempted at building a hospital there but was recalled in 1889 to Trinidad, where she defended the right of Catholic religious sisters and priests to teach in the local school while wearing their religious garb. However, ostracism against her prevailed and she was forced to return to Albuquerque where, in 1901, she completed the construction of the St. Joseph Hospital. In her latter years, she returned to Cincinnati, Ohio where she worked among the Italian immigrant community until her death at the age of 90 (February 23, 1941). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Blandina Segale」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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