VALBURGA, saint. – Sister of St. Villibrordo and Vunibaldo. Of Anglo-Saxon origin, born around 710, she died in her monastery on 25 February 779.
She began her monastic life at Wimborne. At the wish of St. Bonifazio, she came with St. Lioba to the Continent to assist the missions in Germany. Having settled in the new monastery of Heidenheim, founded by her brothers near Eichstätt, she directed it after the death of Vunibaldo (761), and built its abbey church. Her body was transferred to Eichstätt one hundred years later, to the place where the abbey bearing her name was later founded. Many churches in the northern countries are dedicated to her; she is invoked in several illnesses. Feast on 25 February and 1 May.
The abbey of St. V. was founded near the Saint’s tomb at Eichstätt in 1935, through the transformation of the canonesses into Benedictine nuns under episcopal jurisdiction. Already in decline at the beginning of the fifteenth century, it flourished again after the middle of the century. It suffered greatly from the Swedish invasion in the seventeenth century, until it was suppressed in 1806. Rebuilt by the surviving former nuns in 1835, the community established several foundations in North America, forming a flourishing Benedictine congregation with more than 5,000 sisters in 25 monasteries.