Continuing Counter Reformation: Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski's Older Sisters Canonized By RCC

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski's Older Sisters Canonized By RCC

While Wlodimir himself is ignored- why might that be?

Wlodimir Ledochowski (center) being held by his mother Josephine Salis Zizers
flanked by his 2 older sisters
Maria Theresa (b. April 29, 1863 - d. July 6, 1922) at right
Julia Maria Ursula (b. April 17, 1865 - d. May 29, 1939) at left

Both older sisters were famous nuns- famous for being the heads of their respective religious orders.

Each is featured in web sites by various RCC entities. Do a "google" search, particularly for "images" to see the good number of RCC web sites dedicated to either sister, with many in the Polish language, such as this.

Then do the same for Wlodimir, and see that there are about no RCC sites, with the photos primarily from this blog, Continuing Counter Reformation, with these photos obtained from the various sites about these older sisters.

Maria Theresa

Saint Maria Teresia Ledóchowska (29 April 1863 in Loosdorf, Austrian Empire - 6 July 1922 in Rome, Italy) was a Catholic nun and African missionary.

Members of the Polish nobility, she and her siblings - including Wlodimir Ledochowski, Ursula Julia Ledochowska and Ignacy Kazimierz Ledóchowski - were born on the estate of their father, Count Antoni Halka-Ledóchowski. Their uncle was Cardinal Ledóchowski.
From the Claverian Sisters web site:
Mary Theresa was attractive, intelligent, gifted with artistic and literary talents but also vain and ambitious. One day she would accuse herself of wanting to become famous at all costs. She herself related good-humouredly some of her failed exploits:
Her presentation of the siege of Troy with ultra-modern artillery provoked outbursts of laughter, and then there was a painting session. Alas! Her sketch of her sister Marie was judged a caricature.

With her headstrong character, only little by little under the influence of grace did her “I want” become “God wants it”. Suffering, both physical and moral, would shape her heart, making it docile to God and His plans for her.

At 22 Mary Theresa fell victim to small pox. During her illness she showed remarkable abandonment to God’s will at the prospect of being disfigured for life. She accepted it with a smile without flaunting her sacrifice. By now she had understood that external beauty is precarious. But her trial did not end there. Her beloved father visited her and contracted the disease. He died four days later leaving a huge gap in her heart. Evidently, before capturing her definitively, God wanted to sever her ties with everyone and everything. Towards the end of 1885, as soon as she had recovered from smallpox, she became lady in waiting to the Archduchess Alice of Tuscany exiled in Salzburg. Placing herself at the service of the Archduchess, she intended to serve God.

From 1885 to 1890, Maria Teresia was lady-in-waiting to the grand duchess of Tuscany. She had no feeling for religious life until she read an address by Charles Lavigerie, to whom Pope Leo XIII had entrusted the evangelization of Africa. She began to publicize his cause, which soon attracted donations. She left the court, and, in 1894, organized the Sodality of St. Peter Claver for the African Missions and the Liberation of Slaves an association of laywomen to publicize the missions and administer funds. Leo approved the society on April 29, 1894. In 1897, it became a full-fledged religious order. Maria Theresa became known as "the nursing mother of the African missions." Between 1918 and 1933 the baptisms rose from 1.8 million to 4.9 million.

Pope Paul VI beatified her on October 19, 1975. Her feast day is July 6.

Julia Maria Ursula

Saint Ursula Ledóchowska was a Roman Catholic nun who founded the Congregation of the Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus.

Born as Julia Maria Ledóchowska on 17 April 1865 in Loosdorf, Lower Austria, to a Polish nobleman and an Austrian mother as one of five children. The siblings were born on the estate of their father, Count Antoni Halka-Ledóchowski. Mieczysław Cardinal Ledóchowski was a paternal uncle.

Due to financial reverses, the family moved to Saint Poelten and later to Lipnica in their father's native Poland in 1873. Count Antoni Halka-Ledóchowski died of smallpox in February 1885. The siblings' uncle, Mieczysław Cardinal Ledóchowski, assumed responsibility for them.

From the Catholic Online web site:
Julia took the religious name of “Maria Ursula of Jesus” and devoted herself to the care and education of youth. She organized the first residence in Poland for female university students.
As prioress of the convent after the turn of the century, she received a request to found a boarding school for Polish girls in St. Petersburg, Russia, then a cosmopolitan, industrial city. The pastor of St. Catherine’s Church, Msgr. Constantine Budkiewicz (a Polish nobleman), extended the invitation, and Pope St. Pius X gave his approval. So in 1907 Mother Ursula went with another sister to Russia to found a new convent and work among the Catholic immigrants. Although the nuns wore lay clothing, they were under constant surveillance by the secret police.

At the beginning of World War I, Mother Ursula was expelled from Russia as an Austrian national. The Monsignor would be martyred by the Bolsheviks, and St. Petersburg would eventually be renamed “Leningrad”.

Mother Ursula fled to neutral Sweden. She organized relief efforts for war victims and charitable programs for Polish people living in exile, founded a monthly Catholic newspaper, and made extensive ecumenical contacts with Lutherans in Scandinavia.

In 1920 M. Ursula, her sisters, and dozens of orphans (the children of immigrants) made their way back to Poland. During the tumultuous years that they had spent abroad, the growing Ursuline community had developed a distinctive charism and apostolate. Therefore Mother Ursula founded her own Congregation, the Ursuline Sisters of the Heart of Jesus in Agony. Her brother Vladimir, who had become Superior General of the Jesuits, helped to obtain Vatican approval of the new institute, which was to be devoted to “the education and training of children and youth, and service to the poorest and the oppressed among our brethren” (from the Constitutions).
Between the two world wars, M. Ursula and her nuns taught catechism in the enormous factory town of Lodz. She organized a “Eucharistic Crusade” among the working-class children, encouraging those little “Knights of the Crusade” to write to Pope Pius XI in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination. Some children wrote that they loved the Holy Father as much as their own parents. Others spoke of receiving Our Lord in their First Holy Communion, of wanting to be His apostles and missionaries. One child wrote: “How beautiful it would be if the Holy Father were to come to Poland.”
Saint Ursula Ledóchowska died on 29 May 1939 in Rome, aged 74, in the Gray Ursuline convent, Via del Casalet, of natural causes. Her incorrupt body was translated to the Gray Ursuline motherhouse in Pniewy, Poland in 1989.

She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 20 June 1983 and canonized in 2005. Her sister, Theresa, was also canonized for her services to the Catholic Church as Saint Theresa Ledóchowska.