Marie-Adolphine

Saint Marie-Adolphine Dierkx (1866-1900, born Anna Catharina or Kaatje Dierkx) was a Dutch nun who died for her faith in China during the Boxer Rebellion and was canonised in 2000. She is one of the group known as the Martyr Saints of China who were canonised by Pope John Paul II 1 October 2000.
She was born Anna Catharina Dierkx on 8 March 1866 in Ossendrecht, North Brabant, Netherlands. She was one of six children in a poor family, and her mother died while she was young. She worked in a chicory-processing factory and in domestic service before joining the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in Antwerp in 1893 and taking the name Marie-Adolphine. In 1899 she was one of a group of seven sisters from the order who went to Taiyuan, China, arriving on 4 May 1899, to set up an orphanage at the mission there under bishop Gregorio Grassi. At the orphanage, which soon cared for 200 children, she was in charge of the laundry.
On 5 July 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, the Christians at the mission were ordered to renounce their faith or face death; at 4pm on 9 July the priests, nuns, seminarians and Christian lay workers were all killed, in what is known as the Taiyuan massacre. Marie-Adolphine was beatified by Pope Pius XII on 24 November 1946 and canonised by Pope John Paul II on 1 October 2000 as one of a group of 120 Martyr Saints of China. 
There are two statues of Marie-Adolphine in St Gertrude's church Ossendrecht, one in stone and one in wood. The house where she was born has been converted into a chapel, the Adolphinekapel, to which pilgrimages are made.
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