Five Catholic churches in Bayonne will be consolidated next year to form two new churches named after St. John Paul II and Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, according to the Archdiocese of Newark.
BAYONNE -- Five Catholic parishes in Bayonne will be consolidated next year to form two new parishes named after St. John Paul II and Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, according to the Archdiocese of Newark.
RELATED: Five Bayonne Catholic parishes to be consolidated into two, says Archdiocese of Newark
John Paul II, who was canonized to sainthood last April, served as Pope from 1978 until he died at the age of 84 in 2005. His successor to the papacy was Benedict XVI, who in turn was succeeded by Pope Francis, the current pope.
John Paul II was beatified -- one of the steps on the way to being declared a saint -- in 2011 after the Catholic Church attributed a miracle, the healing of a French nun from Parkinson's disease, to his intercession. In 2013, the Church attributed a second miracle, the healing of a Costa Rican woman of a terminal brain aneurysm, to John Paul II, and he was declared a saint the next year.
Born in Bayonne in 1901, Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich was a nun who was baptized, confirmed and made her first Holy Communion at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Parish at 15 East 26th St.
Demjanovich, who died at age 26 in 1927, was beatified in Newark last year after the Church credited her with posthumously restoring perfect vision to a Teaneck boy who was legally blind as a result of juvenile macular degeneration.
Growing up, Demjanovich attended Bayonne public schools, including Bayonne High School. She went on to enter the College of Saint Elizabeth in Convent Station, and graduated with highest honors in 1923.
Two years later, in 1925, she entered the community of Sisters of Charity at Convent Station. She was still a nun in training when she died in a hospital in Elizabeth after an appendectomy. She took her vows on her deathbed.
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