Teresa Helena Higginson

British Roman Catholic mystic

Servant of God Teresa Helena Higginson
Photograph of Teresa Helena Higginson
Born	(1844-05-27)27 May 1844 Holywell, Flintshire, England
Died	15 February 1905(1905-02-15) (aged 60) Chudleigh, Devon, England

Teresa Helena Higginson (27 May 1844 – 15 February 1905) was a British Roman Catholic mystic.

Life

Higginson was born in Holywell, Flintshire, United Kingdom in 1844 where her parents were staying whilst on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Winefride.^[1] Her father Robert Francis Higginson was a Catholic and his wife was a convert. Higginson went to a convent school in Nottingham, and became a schoolteacher at Bootle.^[2]

During her life Higginson's hands and feet bled in a way known as stigmata,^[1] she went into prayer trances that lasted days, and she "violently re-enacted" the scenes in the Stations of the Cross.^[3]

Higginson died in Chudleigh and was declared a Servant of God in 1937.^[4] She was discussed as a possible candidate for beatification in 1928.^[5] Many letters written by Higginson are in the archives at St Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate, with duplicates at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King Liverpool.^[6]

References

^ ^a ^b Teresa Helena Higginson, Amazon, Retrieved 24 November 2015
^ Mary Heimann, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Clarendon Press 1995): 150. ISBN 9780198205975
^ Mary Heimann, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Clarendon Press 1995): 43. ISBN 9780198205975
^ Life story, TeresaHigginson.com, Retrieved 24 November 2015
^ "Woman of Prayer-Trance Likely to be Made Saint" Wilkes-Barre Times Leader (21 November 1928): 10. via Newspapers.com
^ Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King Liverpool, Archives.