Hanna Chrzanowska
Polish nurse, blessed of the Catholic Church (1902–1973)
Feast: 29 April (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
The Vatican record
- 30 September 2015 — Heroic virtue declared — title Venerable (decree list, 2015)
- 7 July 2017 — Miracle through their intercession approved (decree list, 2017)
Who they were
Hanna Chrzanowska was born in Warsaw on 7 October 1902 and became a nurse and a teacher of nursing in Kraków. When the nursing school where she worked was closed, forcing her into early retirement, she began, with the help of priests including Karol Wojtyła, to organise parish nursing in the diocese of Kraków, caring for the seriously ill at home and for the spiritual life of patients and nurses.
She died on 29 April 1973.
The miracles
A woman in Kraków — Kraków, Poland — May 2001
A woman who had trained under Hanna in nursing had suffered for decades from depression, high blood pressure, migraines and blackouts; in 2000 a blood-vessel tumour was found in her brain, and in 2001 a stroke paralysed her left side, and surgery was judged too risky. Though she had long stopped practising her faith, she prayed to Hanna, and friends and the Catholic Nurses' Association Hanna had founded joined a chain of prayer. On 5 May 2001 she told a friend she had made her peace with the Lord, and she recovered.
Why that counted as sanctity
The case of a woman in Kraków was examined by the Church's doctors and theologians and approved as a miracle on 7 July 2017, opening the way to beatification.
The cause
The cause continues. No postulation address is published here yet. Favours received through this person’s intercession, and offers of help, are best sent to the religious order or congregation they belonged to, or to the diocese where the cause was opened; either will pass them to the postulation.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography of Blessed Hanna Chrzanowska, with the miracle
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — promulgated decrees (causesanti.va), summarised in our own words
- Wikidata Q9285951 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Hanna Helena Chrzanowska (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.