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 Legend has it that Sister Blandina Segale, among her many good deeds, once treated a friend of Billy the Kid’s who had been shot. Billy, the story goes, never forgot. 
 
 Sometime later, Sister Segale was riding in a stagecoach that Billy was planning to ambush and rob. But when he looked in the carriage window and saw the good nun, he simply tipped his hat, spurred his steed and rode off toward the horizon. 
 
 “There was nothing bland about Sister Blandina,” said the Most Rev. Ricardo Ramirez, bishop emeritus of Las Cruces. “She was a firecracker.” 
 
 The story about Billy the Kid was related by Archbishop Michael Sheehan on Wednesday, shortly before he declared open the cause of the beatification, or sainthood, of Sister Segale. From here on out, Sheehan said, she shall be known as the Servant of God, the first step on the road to beatification. 
 
 It’s the first time in the 400-year history of New Mexico’s Roman Catholic Church that a decree opening the cause of beatification and canonization has been declared, according to the archdiocese. 
 
 Sheehan said that on Sunday he will hang the formal petition for sainthood on the doors of the Cathedral of St. Francis in Santa Fe. 
 
 Sheehan, at a news conference in Albuquerque, announced the Vatican’s permission to pursue the beatification effort. He was named the judge for the cause. Ramirez assumed the role of postulator and is charged with proving that Sister Segale is worthy of sainthood. 
 
 She brought public and Catholic schools to Santa Fe and opened hospitals. Some of her ministries continue today. 
 
 But she’s probably not the usual candidate for sainthood. Among her exploits were “calming mobs of armed men from taking the law into their own hands, helping criminals seek forgiveness from their victims, and even (saving) a man from a hanging party by facilitating reconciliation between him and the man he shot before he died,” according to church officials. 
 
 Her defiance of the hanging party was featured in 1966 in the television series “Death Valley Days.” The episode was titled “The Fastest Nun in the West.” 
 
 Ramirez, at the news conference, said the more he learns about Sister Segale, the more excited he gets. 
 
 Many of the issues she concerned herself with back then are “things we’re concerned about today” – health care, immigration, caring for children, he said. 
 
 She was born Rosa Maria Segale in 1850 near Genoa, Italy. She immigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, with her family when she was 4. 
 
 Her first word, reportedly, was “Gesu,” Italian for Jesus. 
 
 In 1866, she entered the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, and a few years later was sent to the West. She worked first in Trinidad, Colo., then made her way to Santa Fe, where she co-founded Catholic and public schools. She also opened hospitals in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. 
 
 Her work in the western territories is documented in the letters to her sister, later published in “At the End of the Santa Fe Trail.” 
 
 In 1897, Sister Segale founded the Santa Maria Institute in Cincinnati, a facility that serves immigrants to this day. She returned to Albuquerque at the turn of the 20th century and helped start St. Joseph Hospital, now known as St. Joseph Community Health. 
 
 She died on Feb. 23, 1941, in Cincinnati at the age of 91. 
 
 No one can say with certainty how long the beatification process will take once it reaches the Vatican – it could be years, even generations. 
 
 The Vatican must investigate Sister Segale’s work and monitor for any related “miracles,” which could include healings or unexplained occurrences after devotees pray to her. 
 
 “We hope and pray the process goes quickly,” Sheehan said. ||||| Sister Marjana Lleshi is interviewed by the Associated Press in Ascoli Piceno, Italy, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. Sister Mariana, a 32-year-old from Albania, was one of three nuns and an elderly woman who... (Associated Press) 
 
 Sister Marjana Lleshi is interviewed by the Associated Press in Ascoli Piceno, Italy, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. Sister Mariana, a 32-year-old from Albania, was one of three nuns and an elderly woman who survived the earthquake that hit central Italy early Wednesday when she escaped a collapsing convent... (Associated Press) 
 
 ASCOLI PICENO, Italy (AP) — She became the face of Italy's earthquake: Sister Marjana Lleshi, blood staining her veil as she texted her family and friends in her native Albania that she was alive. 
 
 In an interview Thursday at the mother house of her religious order, the 35-year-old nun recounted how she thought she would die when her convent walls collapsed. She texted her friends asking that they pray for her soul, only to be rescued by a man she has called her "angel." 
 
 Now safe, Lleshi says she wants nothing more than to go to next week's Rome canonization of Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian nun "who gave hope to those who didn't have any." 
 
 Lleshi was sleeping in the Don Minozzi convent beside the Church of the Most Holy Crucifix in Amatrice when the quake struck at 3:36 a.m. Wednesday. She had been there, with six other sisters, caring for five elderly women. Her order, the Sisters of the Handmaidens of the Lord, runs nurseries and homes for the aged. 
 
 She woke up covered in dust and bleeding. Realizing what had happened, she immediately tried to summon help outside her room. 
 
 No one responded. And she couldn't get out. 
 
 "When I started losing all hope of being saved, I resigned myself to it and started sending messages to friends saying to pray for me and to pray for my soul and I said goodbye to them forever," she said outside the order's headquarters in Ascoli Piceno. 
 
 "I couldn't send a message like this to my family because I was afraid that my father would have an emotional collapse and die hearing something like that." 
 
 She said she eventually was rescued by a young man who cared for one of the elderly women at the home. "In that moment, I heard a voice who called me: 'Sister Marjana, Sister Marjana.'" 
 
 He pulled her out. With the ground still shaking, she sat on the side of the road and began texting her friends and sisters that she had survived. 
 
 That moment was immortalized in an image taken by a photographer for the ANSA news agency reprinted worldwide. 
 
 Lleshi spent much of Thursday getting medical checks for dust inhalation and her head wound, which required stitches. Once back home, she wept as she thought of her family. 
 
 She still hopes to travel to Rome for the Sept. 4 canonization of Mother Teresa, the Macedonian-born ethnic Albanian nun who ministered to the poor of India. But the chaos and horror of the moment may be too much. Her order lost three sisters and four of the elderly women they cared for, alongside incalculable losses in the wider community. 
 
 "For me she's the symbol of Albania, of a strong woman," she said of Teresa. "I would have liked to go, but after this I don't think I can." 
 
 She can relish the simple fact of still being alive. 
 
 "I had said 'adieu,'" she said, "and in the end it wasn't an adieu."
– The woman once saluted as the "fastest nun in the West" is on the path to beatification. The cause of Sister Blandina Segale's sainthood has officially been declared open; it's the first time such a cause has been opened in the history of New Mexico's Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop Michael Sheehan tells the Albuquerque Journal. Sister Segale isn't exactly your typical candidate, though. The Italian-born nun was known for "calming mobs of armed men" after she moved to the US and joined the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati. In fact, before traveling to Santa Fe, she was even said to have befriended Billy the Kid in Colorado. When one of her students reportedly told Segale a member of Billy's gang had been shot by an outlaw, she cared for the man, even as four doctors apparently refused. When Billy came to town bent on scalping the doctors, Segale talked him out of it, received his thanks, and later visited him in jail, the New Mexican reports. On another occasion when he met the nun in a stagecoach—terrifying her traveling mates—he simply bowed before riding away. Segale also set up numerous schools and hospitals, worked with the poor and sick, and advocated on behalf of Hispanics and Native Americans, the AP reports. But her canonization process could take years—or even generations. The Vatican must investigate the nun's work and monitor any apparent "miracles" that may be related. "We hope and pray the process goes quickly," Sheehan said. (In terms of Billy the Kid, this may be just the second photo of him ever found.)