Biography of Elizabeth Kindelmann

Erzsébet (Elizabeth) Júlia Szántó, Mrs. Károly Kindelmann, was born in Kispest, (later Budapest’s District XIX), on June 6th, 1913. Her mother, Júlia Erzsébet Mészáros (1878-1924) was descended from a simple middle-class Catholic family. After six pairs of twins, Elizabeth was her 13th and last child. She was baptized at Our Lady of the Assumption Church at Kispest.

Her father, József Szántó (1871-1917), was a Protestant schoolmaster and cantor, whose ancestors had been Italian immigrant artisans. Their original name had been Santo, which was turned into the Hungarian Szántó (= Ploughman). Her grandfather was a Protestant dean who disowned his son for marrying a Catholic girl.

As a gift of his charitable character, he took religious instruction – without his wife’s knowledge – and converted to the Catholic faith in the course of a solemn Mass, before his entire family, immediately before being sent into battle. Only his rosary and Bible returned from the front, thanks to the good offices of a fellow-soldier.

Following this, the entire family died out by 1925: nine of them in the great European Spanish flu epidemic, one of diphtheria, two in accidents. During the epidemic, Elizabeth lived in the area of Paks with her aunt on her mother’s side.

The International Children’s Aid League sent Elizabeth to a family of an agricultural factory owner, who had 8 children, in Willisau, a town in Luzern Canton, Switzerland, to build up her strength. Although they gave her everything, they could not quell her longing for her mother or her homesickness. Her retiring behavior was only intensified by her playmates who made fun of her rudimentary knowledge of the language.

Despite all pampering and comfort, homesickness drove her to escape, to return to her beloved mother. They found her, freezing, on a bench. Consequence of her “outing” was a serious case of pneumonia, and one third of her left lung had to be calcified. She had to have special nursing care for three months.

Her hosts had become very fond of her and did everything to persuade her to stay longer, but once they received news of her mother’s serious sickness, towards the end of 1924, they were compelled, with a heavy heart, to allow her to return to her family. The mother, suffering from softening of the bones and erysipelas, tried to earn money for her remaining family, even from her sickbed, an endeavor supported by a former girlfriend who helped her, from Paris, with embroidery orders.

Following the death of her mother on November 22nd, 1924, her school teacher helped the child, who had been spiritually tried to the utmost, to stay on her feet. Her sister Gizella took her in, to be with her little son. In December 1924, her “Swiss parents” tried to adopt her, but due to a misunderstanding, this never materialized.

But Elizabeth’s misfortune did not end there. She lost the last member of her immediate family, Gizella. in a tragic accident, and her husband died literally of a broken heart. They were buried together. The little orphan boy and Elizabeth were taken in by the above-mentioned aunt on her mother’s side, in Paks.

Difficult years of having to fend for herself followed. She tried to support herself by doing odd jobs on the streets of the capital’s Eighth District, in the area of Üllői út. She went to church to warm up and to rest. She was a market delivery girl, sold candy in movie theaters, made early morning deliveries of buns, croissants and milk, peeled potatoes in bakeries, was a “professional” nutcracker for pastry shops, brush maker, even gardener at a house of ill repute. This last she did as long as she could evade the danger of being molested. This was serious, outright “survival training” for a decent young girl!

Once, when she was sleeping in the open on a bench, suddenly policemen shook her awake, causing her to have a coughing spell that wouldn’t stop. They took the thin young girl to the hospital for a medical exam. Unfortunately, at first glance they diagnosed the spot on her lung as TB, which seemed to be confirmed by her poor health and cough. She tried in vain to explain herself, they thought her condition to be the last stage, and put her among the most seriously ill patients, from where she soon escaped through the fence.

A lady noticed the shivering young girl, wandering forlornly on the street at dawn, who hired her to feed and keep her old bedridden mother tidy. At the first feeding of the sick woman, they forgot that she too was hungry, and even later on they were very inconsiderate toward her. On account of the husband, she was forced to leave here soon, as well.

This life full of variety and privation developed a high degree of independence, extraordinary resourcefulness and determination in her. This was probably when the slightly majestic and “distance keeping” streak of her personality developed, although despite this, she could be kind to people. Even later on, she remained someone who kept to herself, was independent, but not selfish. All her life she wanted to study, to train herself, but her circumstances and opportunities never made this possible.

It was her life’s dream “to serve God”. She saw no other possibility than to apply at the various religious orders, repeating that she would gladly go to distant continents to “make the Good Lord known to everyone”. Unfortunately, she received the same reply from almost everywhere: “You want to come join us only because you have nowhere to go.“

Human indifference affected her very much, but she continued to fight on, in unbelievably reduced circumstances. Delivering rolls for a bakery early in the morning, she would sometimes snitch one, which often was all she had to eat that day. Although miraculously this never showed as missing, she confessed it with tears. Her kindly confessor not only gave the indigent girl absolution, but he himself fought back tears, while he calmed her soul, that in her great need she had not committed any sin! He even gave Elizabeth money so she could pay for the girls’ night shelter run by the Sisters of Mercy on Mária Street.

During the day, especially in cold weather, she took every opportunity to warm up somewhere. She walked the indoor markets, churches, and in the evenings sold candy in movie theaters.

From what little money she was able to save, she finished a nursing course in the fall of 1928, considering that it would help her chances of joining some order of nursing Sisters. Despite that, she was turned away even by them, partly because of her poor appearance and her lack of a “dowry”!

Finally, one Mother Superior was willing to talk to her in the motherhouse of the Szent Lujza Institute. She took seriously Elizabeth’s intention to join them, and said to her: “My daughter, let’s say a Come Holy Spirit and a Hail Mary. Wait for me here and I will ask the Lord about your vocation!“

In her Memoirs, she recalled it this way: “I stood next to the pew in the back, and didn’t even kneel, I was so interested in how the Mother Superior would converse with God, but I was watching in particular to see how she would receive an answer. I didn’t dare to move, and as if paralyzed, awaited the otherworldly mystery. All of a sudden the mother superior stood up and with graceful mildness, but with an absorbed expression, stepped to me. She looked deep into my eyes, squeezed my arm and said: ‘My little one, the will of God is different! God has destined you for a different and greater vocation, which you should try to fulfill as perfectly as you can!’ The Sister accompanied me down to the gate, kissed my forehead and blessed me. But my spiritual world completely collapsed. God, Whom since childhood I had always wanted to serve, didn’t want me! He won’t allow me to serve only Him…! It was the feast of the Visitation.“

As she related, Elizabeth almost lost her faith then. Disconsolate and rebelling, she went to her confessor, who couldn’t offer her much consolation, but who emphasized, that he expected to see her the following week.

Following this, Elizabeth found a scrap of paper in her dress pocket, on which were written the name and address of the Pastor of Christ the King parish. As it turned out, the Mother Superior had slipped it into her pocket, recommending her to her brother. She had even spoken about it to Elizabeth, but she did not hear it. Nevertheless, that slip of paper became a life-changer for her.

Not only did she get to know the Pastor, a splendid priest, but through him, a warm-hearted retired couple as well, with whom she found a home.

Once, when she was alone in her new home, cooking, she broke into song in her beautiful voice, out of sheer happiness. Immersed in her work, she didn’t notice that three people were listening: the returning couple with the Pastor, who had been invited to lunch. The priest then warmly recommended her to his parish choir.

The community soon accepted the cheerful, quick-witted girl, who at 16 met the 35 years older Third Order Franciscan baritone, the widower Károly Kindelmann – her future husband. At first he wanted only to adopt her. When he informed Elizabeth of this, simply to make conversation, she replied: “Girls of this age are usually not adopted, but taken in marriage!“

Károly considered it a good idea, but asked his spiritual director whether it was proper for a 52-year-old man to marry a 17-year-old girl. The answer was positive: “Why not? It is more respectable in the eyes of the world to marry than to adopt. This girl needs a home!“

Elizabeth accepted the proposal, but on one condition: that they start a novena in honor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The novena ended precisely on Pentecost Sunday, May 25th, 1931, when the wedding took place in St. Joseph Church in the Ferencváros district. The entire choir of Christ the King parish was invited to the wedding reception.

At first, they lived in Károly’s apartment; that’s where the first two children were born. (They had six children, three boys and three girls, between 1932 and 1942.)

The second child was six months old, when they bought a pretty little house in Máriaremete, Budapest’s Second District, far from the noise of the city, which Elizabeth called a fairy cottage. For weeks, she was almost unable to speak out of sheer joy. But her cloudless happiness did not last long; shortly thereafter, she became pregnant again, with their third child. For nine months she hung between life and death. She was in labor for a month. But instead of redeeming joy there was constant worry about the little girl, who did not thrive and, going from one hospital to the next, they fought for her life for three years. One after another, the doctors had already given up hope for the little one when, having reached her third year, she suddenly gained strength.

Elizabeth experienced motherly anguish in every pore. It is no wonder that later on she felt so deeply the anxious pain of our Heavenly Mother for us, her children.

In 1938, when the area below Hármashatárhegy was subdivided, Károly bought a quarter acre orchard, on which he built a 5-room house in 1939. Everyone liked it very much, only Elizabeth cried unconsolably, perhaps having a premonition of her future sufferings in this house.

The family lived a quiet, middle class Catholic life. They ordinarily said evening prayer in common, which they began with an examination of conscience, asking each other for forgiveness. At the start, it was always the second child, little Joseph who lit the candle on the home altar, the flowers on it being taken care of by the girls.

Sunday luncheons were true family feasts. Afterwards, Elizabeth would read aloud from religious publications. On the corner shelf in the children’s room stood a statue of St. Therese of Lisieux, with a mite box below it, in which they collected, for the missions, the pennies they received from their parents and guests. These they sent in, in October, for Mission Sunday.

The father recited the Rosary every day – in German – in the nearby church, if possible, where he went to Mass on his own. The children went with their mother to Máriaremete or to Holy Spirit Church in Kertváros. In Advent, the older ones attended Rorate (Mass at dawn), and excitedly prepared for Christmas. Already in the fall, the Pastor of Holy Spirit Church asked his more talented parishioners, including the Kindelmann children, to prepare simple gifts for poorer children. Some of these they received as gifts, others were sold in a charity bazaar. Some families were able to receive financial help through this.

In 1938, the Pastor recruited the family to join the “Family Consecration to the Sacred Heart”. As one of the requirements, every Friday they renewed their dedication in front of the picture of the Sacred Heart with the red vigil light in front of it, also reciting the Litany of the Sacred Heart.

Beginning in the 1940s, the father suffered from cancer. By February 2nd, 1945, he was very sick. The six children and their mother went to Mass, with candles in their hands. When they started out, they carefully locked every door on the patient. To their consternation – when they returned – they found every door open. Stepping into the house, they noticed a wonderful fragrance that pervaded the whole apartment. The head of the family lay in the innermost room, and they saw with amazement that he was clutching a rosary, and his face was bathed in tears. He cried so hard he could barely speak. In a husky voice, he finally said: “The Madonna was here …!” Moved, they listened to the father’s slow explanation: “The Madonna promised that she will soon take me with her … I should get ready … and she said something about you, the family, but I don’t remember that any more!” Later on, he asked his family to build a Lourdes grotto in the garden, in memory of the Virgin Mother’s visit.

On April 25th, 1945, at 32, Elizabeth became a widow with six children. The oldest was 13, the youngest 3 years old. The family’s “Calvary” began, consummated by the Communist nationalization which deprived them of their livelihood.

Elizabeth could still work in their own business until 1948, but she was dismissed due to nationalization. All their income ceased, Elizabeth did not get a job. Despite all her housewifely skills, they soon ate up their reserves. Only then did they begin to appreciate truly the father’s foresight with the large garden, which became the sole basis of the family’s existence. Besides caring for the fruit trees, they grew vegetables, potatoes, even corn for animal feed. They tried to earn money to pay for their daily bread and for utilities by knitting stockings by hand and by machine. The oldest girl knit sweaters by hand, which they sold to cooperatives and door-to-door salesmen. Later on, Elizabeth painted scarves, even accepting orders for different types of embroidery, but these did not assure the livelihood of a family of seven, so she had to look for a job. She was successful only intermittently. Because if she was hired anywhere, she was soon dismissed for her “clerical attitude”, not having signed the sheet commending the sentencing of Cardinal Mindszenty, and also for registering her children in religious education.

It happened in 1948, that as she came home dead tired from her workplace, she found two unknown men in their garden. The figures in leather jackets walked around the house, not paying her any attention, and were immersed in planning how to remodel this and that. Elizabeth immediately ran to the Council, where she found their name on the bulletin board on the list of those to be deported. She began a family prayer campaign, and they implored the Lord with full heart and soul, without interruption. With success, but the nightmare was repeated in 1951: they got on the list for the second time on account of their German name! This time, the father’s former medical connection helped, because his former doctor’s son was the president of the Deportation Committee. Was this a miracle? In those days, by all means, because “in those days” there was no mercy!

Elizabeth worked without a word of complaint even for 12 hours a day, with strong moral courage, in vain accepting even two shifts – she was dismissed every time! She worked as a laborer in an ironworks, as a cleaning lady and as a cook, but under Socialism no one was interested in how many children a widow had to support on one salary.

But the everyday “miracles” continued. At the end of the 1950s, Elizabeth became a nursing assistant in the Széher Úti Hospital. Her nursing and home care course that she completed at age 16 came in handy for this.

By 1961, after almost 20 years of heroic struggle – seeing her children become independent – she felt that she could finally take a rest. But that date brought her the main vocation of her life, the heavenly assignment, and at the same time the most nerve-wracking family anxiety, in which she had to raise her three orphaned infant grandchildren.

From 1965 on, she had to confront superhuman “summons and challenges”: on the one hand, the Lord’s urging that she deny herself, on the other, the urgent expectation of the motherly and grandmotherly sense of duty that she not let the orphans of her deceased daughter-in-law and her sick son end up in state custody. While she did her utmost to do justice to the Heavenly urgings, she cared for and nurtured her son until his death. It wasn’t easy for her to obtain, from the Marxist system, the right to bring up the little ones, since they could not expect a “clerical grandma” to provide the “expected education”. The bouts of fervor and doubts, the small successes and the big fiascos, and the countless humiliations put even her battle-seasoned spiritual strength to the test. It is obvious that she would not have been able to carry out the “heavenly-worldly” assignment without the help of divine Providence.

Two of her spiritual directors accompanied her on her first trip to Rome (1976) – one was a Professor at the Budapest Theological Academy – to hand over to Pope Saint Paul VI the introduction to the Flame of Love. The Holy Father asked for more detailed information.

The second Roman trip took place in 1978, before which – at Jesus’ request – Elizabeth had to fast on bread and water for 40 days for the success of her mission. The 40 Cardinals then living in Rome did receive the message and explanation of the Flame of Love. First among them was the Hungarian Cardinal László Lékai.

According to the Lord’s request, Elizabeth lived in “hidden humility”, and responded exclusively to clerical invitations. Several “inner” lay apostles helped her in furthering the Cause.

Her health began to deteriorate in 1984; she was hospitalized in November, and was treated in various institutions. An aged couple took her in to care for her under the supervision of the district doctor, on March 24, 1985. Although she suffered much – she had cancer – nevertheless she remained even-tempered and called herself happy for not having to spend her days in hospital surroundings.

With rosary in hand, and strengthened with the Sacraments several times, she went to her heavenly homeland with a slight smile, on April 11, 1985.

At present, her body awaits the resurrection next to her husband in the family crypt, in the lower level of Holy Spirit Church, Remetekertváros. Her tomb is a place of pilgrimage, and as the faithful have not forgotten her, it is certain that neither have the Powers Above, since the Virgin Mother promised her during her life: “…When you arrive, I’ll be waiting for you with motherly love. O my little Carmelite daughter! Your drops of oil pressed out by sufferings will fall back unto empty, flickering lamps left on earth (people), and will catch fire from my Flame of Love. Therefore, your place will be beside me, so that in this way we might together save souls until the end of the world.“