If you’re new here, hi — welcome! For some context to this reflection, you may want to read the story I just wrote about the awesome year I had with my 2023 patron saint:
New Friends
Last year, I was blessed to connect with artist Ruben Ferreira, whose depictions of the saints resonate deeply with my John 10:10 spirituality. In May, he posted to social media his striking painting of a woman being manhandled by Nazis — yet, her face shone with a brilliant expression. She looked like she knew what she was about.
When the time came for me to choose my patron for this year, I felt that woman pressing for attention in my mind, though I knew little about her.
I decided to take a chance on her, and have entrusted myself — for at least this year — to the heavenly intercession of Blessed Sára Salkaházi.
She Tried On New, Worn Shoes
Born Sarolta Klotild Schalkház, she lived in a well-to-do family in Upper Hungary at the beginning of the twentieth century. She studied to become a teacher, and it was in the classroom that she learned about the lives of her impoverished and disadvantaged students.
After only one year, she left teaching and began writing newspaper articles about the life of the lower class. She became a bookbinder’s apprentice, a role in which her Vatican biography says she, “was given the hardest and dirtiest work.” After becoming a professional in that trade, she went to work in a millinery shop. All the while, she wrote.
Sarolta’s strong desire to spread awareness of social injustices through journalism reminds me of a special memory. The then-editor of my city’s newspaper once visited my university Communications Studies class. To my surprise, he shook my hand and complimented me on a piece I’d written for the school newspaper about drug cartel activity in Texas. Receiving such a compliment in-person was an honor and a thrill, but what mattered more was knowing that my work was strong enough to make a real difference.
New Associations
Sarolta’s first published volume of short stories earned critical acclaim and a national prize in 1926. Her name was spoken in intellectual circles, and certainly among smoker’s circles… She was addicted.
“Independence, cigarettes, a cafe, wandering, a quick dinner in a small inn, gypsy music…” - Sarolta’s description of her life then.
She joined the Christian Socialist Party, and became the group’s full-time newspaper editor.
Her father having died in 1901 when she was still an infant, Sarolta had looked to her mother as a role model. Rightly so; Klotild had raised three children while managing the family business. I imagine that Sarolta’s mother, alongside contemporary cultural movements for women’s rights, inspired her to write and organize on behalf of women and girls.
Interestingly, she’d been described as having a ‘boyish’ demeanor in her youth. Although I don’t remember anyone characterizing me with quite the same description, I preferred rock music to shopping, and talking basketball to gossip. I tended toward male friends.
Now, however, I’m spending my fifteenth year helping to organize a local women’s conference. What changed? My mom took me to a women’s conference where I received a copy of “Letter to Women” by Pope John Paul II. Reading it in my bedroom at home, I realized that I’d adopted an idea of femaleness and maleness from societal gender stereotypes — which is why I’d never identified with being ‘a girl.’ The Pope’s letter helped me see the dignity and genius of my being a woman beyond shallow expectations; a vision for which Sarolta had fought only decades prior.
New Name, New Life
More involved in her city than ever, Sarolta encountered an intriguing group of women. The Sisters of Social Service, a Catholic religious order founded in 1908 and inspired by a papal document on worker’s rights, met Sarolta while offering community courses.
She became convinced that this was the reason she’d turned down her short-term fiancé — a life totally dedicated to social service.
When the Sisters turned her down initially, Sarolta put her fierce determination to the test: she quit smoking. After being admitted to the Sisters in 1930, she took on so many assignments — writing & editing a women’s journal, managing a bookstore, teaching, supervising a shelter, organizing the National Girls’ Movement, cooking, and more — that she suffered an extraordinarily awful burnout.
Like many good Americans, I struggle to relax. Is it because of the ‘by your bootstraps’ work ethic that’s praised here? Is it my big-sister, Jesus-disciple sense of responsibility for almost everyone and everything? Heaven has allowed me to wrestle with fibromyalgia and autoimmune conditions, which force me to learn my limits — sometimes the hard way. I’m looking forward to more lessons from my new patroness, who is clearly an experienced teacher!
By 1940, Hungary joined the Axis powers and allied itself with Nazi Germany. In the next few years, many people living around Sarolta reclaimed their family’s old German names. (Some Hungarians belong to Germanic ethnic groups.) Meanwhile, Sarolta changed hers to something that sounded much more Hungarian in protest; Sára Salkaházi.
She defied the Nazis as well as she could, and they killed her for it.
I look forward to reflecting more on her inspiring heroism with you, later in our journey together this year.
Blessed Sára Salkaházi, pray for us; you are more alive now than ever.
Please visit the official website of Sára’s Cause for Canonization hosted by the Sisters of Social Service, who continue their good work to this day.
What an intriguing twentieth century spiritual figure! Thanks for a fascinating read, Angela.