Saint Rafqa
Saint Rafqa was a Lebanese Maronite nun who spent nearly three decades in illness, blindness, and near-total paralysis, yet met each day with a peace that astonished everyone around her. Canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2001, she is known in English as Saint Rebecca and is loved as a companion to everyone who carries pain and asks God for the strength to bear it.
The Name: Rafqa and Rebecca
People searching for "Saint Rebecca" and people searching for "Saint Rafqa" are looking for the same woman. Rafqa is simply the Arabic and Syriac form of the biblical name Rebecca, so in English she is often called Saint Rebecca.
She was not born with this name. She received it later, as a nun, in honor of her own mother, who was also called Rafqa. Whether you know her as Rafqa or Rebecca, the story below is hers.
Early Life
She was born on June 29, 1832, in the village of Himlaya, in the Metn region of Mount Lebanon, and was baptized Boutrossieh, sometimes rendered as Pierina or Pietra. Her family name was Ar-Rayes. Her parents were devout, simple people who taught her to pray from her earliest years.
When she was about seven years old, her mother died. The loss marked the beginning of a hard season for the family, and financial difficulty followed. As a young girl she was sent away to work as a domestic servant in Damascus, spending several years in a stranger's household to help support those at home.
Those years were not easy for a child, yet they seem to have deepened rather than broken her faith. When she returned to Lebanon, her heart was already turning toward religious life, even as relatives had other plans for her future. She felt called to give herself entirely to God.
There is a tenderness in tracing her beginnings. She lost the person closest to her while still small, worked among strangers before she was grown, and had every reason to grow hard. Instead she seems to have carried an early trust that God had not abandoned her, a trust that would later be tested far beyond what most people are asked to endure.
Religious Vocation
Around 1859 she entered the Congregation of the Marianites, a community devoted to the Virgin Mary. She was sent to teach, including a period at Deir el Qamar, and served in several places across a Lebanon that was often torn by violence in those years. In one account she risked her own safety to shelter a frightened child beneath her robe during local clashes.
When her congregation went through upheaval and was folded into other communities, Rafqa faced a decision about where her vocation would continue. After praying for guidance, she asked to enter the Baladita nuns, the branch of the Lebanese Maronite Order of Saint Anthony. It was here that she received the name Rafqa.
She began her novitiate at the monastery of Saint Simon El Qarn in Aito, in northern Lebanon, and professed her perpetual vows in 1872. For many years she lived the ordinary rhythm of monastic life there, prayer, manual work, silence, and fasting, unremarkable to the outside world and content to be so.
It is worth pausing on how hidden this life was. For roughly a quarter of a century she was simply one nun among others, keeping the hours of prayer, tending small chores, and asking for nothing. Nothing in these decades marked her out as a future saint. Her holiness grew quietly, in faithfulness to small things, long before the world had any reason to notice her.
The Prayer to Share in Christ's Suffering
Rafqa's life took its defining turn in 1885. She had known health and usefulness, and she began to feel uneasy that she had never suffered as Christ suffered. During the feast of the Holy Rosary, she prayed a startling prayer: she asked God to let her share in the pain of his Passion.
That same night the pain began. It settled first in her head and eyes, an intense and relentless ache. Doctors were consulted, and a painful medical procedure meant to relieve her instead cost her the sight of her right eye.
The illness did not retreat. Over the following years she lost the sight in her other eye as well and became completely blind. Her bones dislocated, her joints stiffened, and she was gradually reduced to near-total paralysis. This condition lasted roughly twenty-nine years, until her death.
Serenity in Suffering
What set Rafqa apart was not the severity of her illness but the spirit in which she carried it. She did not complain. When her sisters grieved over her, she comforted them instead, speaking of her pain as a gift she had asked for and would not return.
She spent her final years at the monastery of Saint Joseph in Jrabta, where the community had moved. Blind and largely unable to move, she still asked to be given small tasks she could do by touch, knitting and simple handwork, so that she would not be idle. Those who visited her often left feeling that they, not she, had been consoled.
Her patience was not a grim endurance but something closer to gratitude. She is remembered for saying that she did not want the suffering taken away, only that God's will, and not her own, be done. In this she became a living picture of what it can mean to unite one's pain with Christ rather than to be crushed by it.
"I asked God for suffering, and He granted it. I will not ask Him to take it away. His will, not mine."
Her Death at Jrabta
Saint Rafqa died on March 23, 1914, at the monastery of Saint Joseph in Jrabta, at the age of eighty-one. She had borne her illness for nearly three decades, and she met death with the same calm trust she had shown in life.
Almost at once, pilgrims began to come to her grave, and reports of favors and healings followed. Her feast day is kept on March 23, and her tomb at Jrabta remains a place of quiet pilgrimage, especially for those seeking healing of the eyes.
A small basilica was later built beside her original grave to receive the pilgrims who kept arriving, year after year, from Lebanon and far beyond. Many come simply to sit near a woman who understood pain from the inside and to ask her to pray for their own.
Beatification and Canonization
The Church examined Rafqa's life and the graces reported through her intercession over many years. Pope John Paul II beatified her on November 17, 1985, and canonized her on June 10, 2001, at Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. With that declaration she became the first Maronite woman to be canonized.
She belongs to a remarkable circle of holiness that emerged from the Lebanese Maronite Order in modern times. Her fellow saints of the same order include Saint Charbel Makhlouf, the hermit of Annaya; Saint Nimatullah Al-Hardini, a teacher and monk; and Saint Estephan Nehme. Together they root the ancient Maronite tradition in living witnesses, drawing on a heritage that reaches back to Saint Maron himself.
Patronage and Legacy
Because of her own blindness, Saint Rafqa is especially invoked by those with illnesses of the eyes, and more broadly by the sick and the suffering of every kind. Having lost her mother as a small child, she is also remembered by those who grieve the loss of a parent. Many of the healings reported at her tomb in Jrabta involve sight.
Her deeper legacy is a way of praying through pain. Rafqa does not promise that suffering will be removed, but she shows that it can be transformed when it is offered to God with love. For anyone facing chronic illness, loss, or exhaustion, her life is an invitation to ask not only for relief but for the grace to remain at peace. You can bring that need to God through a prayer for strength or, in seasons of loss, a prayer for grief. To ask her intercession directly, pray the Novena to Saint Rafqa or the Saint Rafqa prayer for the sick.
In an age that works hard to avoid every discomfort, Rafqa is a difficult and consoling figure at once. She reminds those who suffer that they are not being punished and are not forgotten. Her blindness never closed her to God, and her stillness never silenced her prayer. That quiet fidelity, more than any single wonder, is why she is loved.
Saint Rafqa's story endures because it is honest. She did not pretend her pain was small, and she did not let it make her bitter. She simply stayed close to the One she loved, day after dark day, until the end.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Saint Rafqa?
Saint Rafqa (1832-1914) was a Lebanese Maronite nun of the Lebanese Maronite Order of Saint Anthony. She is remembered for praying to share in the sufferings of Christ and for bearing decades of illness, blindness, and near-total paralysis with serene faith and gratitude. She was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2001, becoming the first Maronite woman declared a saint.
Is Saint Rafqa the same as Saint Rebecca?
Yes. Rafqa is the Arabic and Syriac form of the biblical name Rebecca, so Saint Rafqa is known in English as Saint Rebecca. Both names refer to the same Lebanese Maronite nun. She took the religious name Rafqa in honor of her own mother, who bore that name.
Why did Saint Rafqa suffer?
In 1885, during the feast of the Holy Rosary, Rafqa prayed to share in the sufferings of Christ so that she would not feel forgotten by God. Soon after, she developed severe pain in her head and eyes. Over the following years she lost her sight completely and gradually became paralyzed. She endured this illness for roughly twenty-nine years, until her death in 1914, and never asked for it to be taken away.
When was Saint Rafqa canonized?
Saint Rafqa was beatified by Pope John Paul II on November 17, 1985, and canonized by the same pope on June 10, 2001, at Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. She is one of the saints of the Lebanese Maronite Order, alongside Saint Charbel Makhlouf, Saint Nimatullah Al-Hardini, and Saint Estephan Nehme.
What is Saint Rafqa the patron saint of?
Saint Rafqa is invoked as a patron of the sick and the suffering, and especially of those with illnesses of the eyes, because of her own blindness. She is also associated with those who have lost a parent. Many pilgrims report healings, particularly of eye conditions, at her tomb in the monastery of Saint Joseph in Jrabta, Lebanon.
See also: Saint Charbel Makhlouf, Saint Nimatullah Al-Hardini, and Saint Estephan Nehme, fellow saints of the Lebanese Maronite Order. Explore all the Maronite saints and the wider Maronite tradition.