AMERICA: remarkable nun who cared for Billy the Kid takes a step towards sainthood

It’s acknowledgment a person serves as an example for others to imitate, said Allen Sánchez, president of the nonprofit Catholic health organisation CommonSpirit St. Joseph’s Children based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

With that in mind, Vatican theologians voted unanimously late last week to advance the cause for beatification and canonisation for Sister Blandina Segale, a member of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati who traveled to Santa Fe in the 1870s and played a vital role in establishing New Mexico hospitals and the state’s public school system.

The Thursday 28th May vote brings Sr Segale one step closer to sainthood — a declaration Sánchez has been petitioning for since 2014.

“There was no debate,” Sánchez told a crowd on Monday outside the Blandina Segale Convent at the San Felipe de Neri Church at Albuquerque’s Old Town Plaza, where the Archdiocese of Santa Fe announced the milestone. “It was all celebration.”

The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints now has until the end of the summer to vote on whether they believe Segale is “venerable” — a recommendation that will be given to the pope, Sánchez said.

“Venerable” is the title given to a deceased person with proof of heroic virtue in the first stage of canonization. With beatification — which requires proof of miraculous healing — the title changes to “blessed,” and with canonisation — which requires proof of another miracle — it becomes “saint.”

“For beatification, we need one miracle,” Sánchez said. “We have 58 of them.”

Later known as “The Fastest Nun in the West,” Sr Segale was born in Cicagna, Italy, in 1850. Her family immigrated to Cincinnati when she was 4; in 1866, she entered the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati.

In 1872, Segale was sent to work in the Wild West — first in Trinidad, Colo., and then in Santa Fe in 1877. She co-founded public and Catholic schools across New Mexico and started hospitals in Albuquerque and Santa Fe — one of which later became Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center.

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.

Segale traveled alone on dusty trails and railroads, through the unexplored lands of the far Southwest, finally reaching Trinidad, a frontier mining town, on December 9, 1872. After opening a school almost alone, her first action was to fight against the common practice of lynching. She came to learn from one of her students that a member of the gang led by the famed outlaw Billy the Kid had been seriously wounded, and had been left alone to die in a shack. She immediately 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.

In December 1873, Segale received a letter from her mother superior, directing her to move to Santa Fe. Despite the scarcity of funding and resources, Segale founded 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 St. Vincent Hospital and for the care of the indigent. She visited and took care of Billy the Kid and other prisoners confined in the main prison in New Mexico.

In 1882, Segale was charged with the reconstruction of the sisters’ dilapidated convent in Albuquerque. She also attempted to build a hospital there but was recalled in 1889 to Trinidad, where she defended the right of the Sisters of Charity to teach in the local school while wearing their religious habit. However, anti-Catholic prejudice prevailed and Segale was forced to return to Albuquerque where, in 1901, she completed the construction of St. Joseph Hospital.

Segale returned to Cincinnati, where she worked with her sister for the Italian immigrant community until her death at the age of 91, on February 23, 1941.

“She could see what the Southwest needed,” Archbishop John C. Wester told the crowd at San Felipe de Neri Church.

“She could see what New Mexico needed when she was here in the 1800s. … She could see that we needed hospitals and schools and cemeteries and orphanages and all kinds of institutions to help people, and she started them.”

Segale confronted lynch mobs with courage and crossed paths with the famed outlaw Billy the Kid, Wester said. She was 5 feet tall — “a little powerhouse” — and had ridden to New Mexico in a stagecoach by herself, he added.

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