Saint of the Week: Edith Cavell
10/15/2025
Edith Cavell
1865-1915
Nurse and Martyr
The eldest of four siblings, Edith Cavell was born on December 4, 1865, in a small village near Norwich, England, where her father long served as the local vicar. Edith received a classical English boarding school education and spent some time after graduation serving a governess in Brussels. After caring for her gravely sick father, Edith became a nurse at the London Hospital in 1896. Besides working at hospitals and infirmaries throughout England, she served as a private traveling nurse, visiting and caring for patients in their homes. In 1907, she has hired as the matron of Brussels’ newly founded L’École Belge d’Infirmières Diplômées (aka the Berkendael Medical Institute). While serving there, Edith launched a nursing journal, L’infirmière, and taught nursing in several other schools throughout Belgium. World War I broke out while she was in England visiting family, which precipitated an immediate return to Belgium. There, she was serving as a Red Cross nurse when German forces occupied Brussels in 1914. Cavell began collaborating with others to shelter and smuggle Allied soldiers out of Belgium and into the Netherlands. Motivated by deep Christian faith, Edith insisted on treating wounded soldiers on both sides of the war effort, which, combined with her outspokenness against the war and the occupation, placed her in violation of German military law. Eventually arrested on August 3, 1915, during her depositions to German police, she admitted smuggling more than 60 British and 15 French soldiers, as well as 100 draftable French and British civilians out of Belgium and into neutral countries. The evening before she was executed, Edith spoke these words to Father Stirling Gahan, the Anglican prison chaplain, words that are inscribed on her memorial near London’s Trafalgar Square: “Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.” On the morning of her death, she asked Pastor Paul Le Seur, the Lutheran prison chaplain, to ask “Father Gahan to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country.” The German government executed Edith Cavell on October 12, 1915.
Living God, the source of all healing and wholeness: we bless you for the compassionate witness of your servant Edith Cavell. Inspire us to be agents of peace and reconciliation in a world beset by injustice, poverty, and war. We ask this through Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, to the ages of ages. Amen.
