WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas nun says she is surprised that her slain brother could become a saint, but that it “couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

Marita Rother says that Stanley Rother was tireless and that he taught her “how to live and how to die in dignity.”

Marita Rother belongs to the Wichita Center of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, where a small statue of Stanley Rother stands.

He was killed in 1981 after three men broke in to his Guatemala rectory. He was declared a martyr last year and will be beatified in September — the final stage before canonization as a saint.

Rother is the first American-born martyr and would be the first U.S. priest to be beatified.