Maria Alphonse Ratisbonne
Catholic priest, visionary and missionary.
Born in 1814 in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine; died in 1884 at Ain Karim, near Jerusalem.
Born Jewish, by 1842 he had completely lost his faith.
He was converted to Catholicism by a miraculous apparition of the Blessed Virgin at the church of San Andrea delle Fratte at Rome, Italy.
He assisted his brother Theodor in founding a sisterhood of Our Lady of Sion in 1843.
Ordained as a priest in 1847.
He transplanted the Sisters of Sion to Jerusalem in 1855, built convents and orphanages for them, and worked as a missionary in the region the rest of his life.
New Catholic Dictionary
