A 27-year-old woman who died fighting cancer is emerging as a possible saint from India, with people seeking her intercession for wayward youth.
Ajna George, a member of the Jesus Youth movement and an assistant professor, died January 21 in Kochi, the commercial capital of Kerala, southern India.
At the funeral on January 22, Father Jean Felix Kattassery, Ajna’s spiritual director for nearly two decades, compared her to Carlo Acutis, an English-born Italian who died of blood cancer October 12, 2006, and was beatified 14 years later.
Father Kattassery, parish priest of St Patrick’s Church, Vyttila, under the archdiocese of Verapoly, said like Blessed Carlo, Ajna had set apart her life for “devotion to the Holy Eucharist from a very early age, forbearing acceptance and offering of the excruciating pains of cancer for the glory of God, embracing the Eucharistic Lord with a smile even as death drew close.”
She was a former coordinator of Jesus Youth in Sacred Heart College at Thevara, a Kochi suburb. She was part of the Ernakulam Teens’ Team and the All Kerala Music Central Team, says the Jesus Youth’s Facebook page.
“An inspiring life… and death. Oh holy Ajna, pray for us,” writes Bella Rajan, headmistress of St Gabriel School, Ranjhi near Jabalpur in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, in the Jesus Youth Facebook page.
Don Bosco Father Jose Koonananickal, who is in Andhra Pradesh’s Peddaboddepalli, writes, “Wonderful heroic life. May the Good Lord take her home to heaven. May she enjoy rest and happiness with God.”
Dora Lobo, another Facebook subscriber, exclaims: “How holy to welcome such suffering, in spite of youth. May she pray for all wayward youth. RIP holy one.”
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