Sister Maria Restitua Beheaded in Vienna, 1943

Sister Maria Restitua

It defies understanding how a Catholic nun could be charged, convicted, and executed by the guillotine in 1943.

Sistere Restitua was born in Husovice, Austria, in 1894 to devout Catholic parents. Sister received her First Communion in 1905 and Confirmation a year later. By the time she was 19, she was an assistant nurse at the Lainz City Hospital and working with the Franciscan Sisters of Charity.

She began the steps to becoming a nun, and on October 23, 1915, she became Sister Maria Restitua and took her final vows. By the end of WWI, she was the head surgical nurse at Modling Hospital in Vienna.

Sister Restitua had never heard of Adolph Hitler and could never imagine that her beloved Vienna would be annexed to the German Republic as the Nazis took over. She was very outspoken about the Nazis and didn’t hide her disgust with them.

At the hospital, Sister Restituta hung a cross in each hospital room, which infuriated the Nazis, who demanded they be removed, as a doctor reported her to the Nazi party.

On Ash Wednesday in 1942, the Gestapo arrested her as she left the operating room, charging her with hanging crucifixes and writing a poem mocking Hitler.

The Nazis sentenced her to death by the guillotine. They did offer her freedom if she would denounce and abandon the Franciscan Order. Sister absolutely refused and was sent to prison awaiting execution. For a year, she waited in prison, giving aid and support to other prisoners.

An appeal was filed and wound up on the desk of Hitler’s personal secretary, Martin Bormann (1900–1945), who refused clemency, saying she would be providing encouragement to others. On March 30, 1943, Sister Restituta was beheaded in the Vienna Regional Court yard during Holy Week. Not wanting to make a martyr of her, her body was thrown into a mass grave.

Martin Bormann, right, and Adolph Hitler

When Pope Paul II was visiting Vienna in 1998, he beatified her as Blessed Sister Maria Restituta. This made her the first female martyr of Vienna. The street in Vienna where the hospital where she worked is named Sister Reatituta Street.

Sister Reastituta

Many, many nuns were executed during the Nazi regime, mostly in the extermination camps.