Feastday: May 29
Birth: 1865
Death: 1939
Julia Maria Ledóchowska was born in Austria in 1865, the daughter of a Polish count and a Swiss noblewoman. Her large family was a school of saints. Her uncle, Cardinal Mieczyslaw Ledóchowski, the Primate of Poland, was persecuted and imprisoned for his opposition to the policies of the Prussian Kulturkampf ["culture war"]. Her older sister, Blessed Maria Teresa Ledóchowska, founded the Missionary Sisters of S. Peter Claver and is affectionately known as the "Mother of Black Africa".
Julia Maria moved with her family to Poland when her father became ill in 1883. He died soon after, having given his blessing to her plans to enter the Convent of the Ursuline Sisters in Krakow. 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." Mother Ursula Ledóchowska died on May 29, 1939 at the general house of her community in Rome.
Pope John Paul II beatified her during his second pastoral visit to Poland, in 1983, the Holy Year of Redemption and the sixth centenary of Our Lady of Jasna Gora, in the city of Poznan, with schoolchildren from Lodz in attendance.
While visiting his homeland in June 1983, the Holy Father spoke the following words: "It is the Saints and the Blessed who show us the path to the victory that God achieves in human history. Every individual is called to a similar victory. Every son and daughter of Poland who follows the example of her saints and beati. Their elevation to the altars in their homeland is the sign of that strength which is more powerful than any human weakness and more powerful than any situation, even the most difficult, not excluding the arrogant use of power."
Less than a decade later, in 1991, when Pope John Paul II returned to Poland to beatify Bishop Pelczar, Solidarity had prevailed, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the Catholic hierarchy had been restored in most Eastern European nations.
Julia Ledóchowska (17 April 1865 – 29 May 1939) - in religious Maria Ursula of Jesus - was a Polish Roman Catholic professed religious and the foundress of the Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus. Ledóchowska was a prolific supporter of Polish independence which she often spoke about at conferences across Scandinavia while she settled in Russia for a time to open convents until her expulsion. But she continued to found convents across Scandinavian countries and even translated a Finnish catechism for the faithful there while later founding her own order which she would later manage from Rome at the behest of Pope Benedict XV.
Her death caused a tremendous outpouring of grief across Europe in the places that she had lived in and had visited; before long there were calls for a sainthood process to launch which would open 15 October 1981 (titling her as a Servant of God) despite diocesan investigations happening decades prior. The confirmation of her heroic virtue allowed for her to be named as Venerable in 1983; Pope John Paul II beatified her in Poznań in 1983 and later canonized Ledóchowska in Saint Peter's Square in mid-2003.
Life
Julia Ledóchowska was born just after Easter on 17 April 1865 in Loosdorf into a prominent noble house as the fifth of ten children to Count Antoni Halka-Ledóchowski (03.08.1823-21.02.1885) and his second wife Countess Josephine Salis-Zizers (01.07.1831-14.07.1909; she was descended from Swiss aristocrats). Her half-siblings from her father's first marriage to Countess Seilers were Tymoteusz (1855-1890) and Kazimierz Ignacy (1857-1930) and Antoni Ignacy Józef (22.05.1856-17.01.1935). Her siblings were:
- Maria Theresa (29.04.1863-06.07.1922)
- Wlodimir (07.10.1866-13.02.1942)
- Maria (died aged five)
- Maria Józefa (16.10.1867-21.07.1879)
- Ernestina (07.01.1869-19.03.1950)
- Franciszka (30.05.1870-07.07.1953)
- Iganacy Kazimierz (05.08.1871-06.03.1945)
- Josefa (died after birth)
- Stanisław (died after birth)
The Cardinal Halka-Ledóchowski was her paternal uncle.
Due to financial reverses in 1874 all relocated to Sankt Poelten where she and her sister Maria Theresa attended a grammar school that the Sisters of Loreto were managing. In 1882 her father - who longed to return to his homeland knowing his end was near - acquired an estate in Lipnica Murowana near Tarnów and in 1883 moved there where her father died in 1885 due to smallpox; her sister Maria Theresia also contracted this but recovered from it. He died after having blessed her desire to become a nun. The siblings' cardinal uncle took care of them after this.
On 18 August 1886 she entered the novitiate of the Ursulines in Kraków. In 1887 she received the religious habit and was given the religious name of "Maria Ursula of Jesus"; she made her perpetual profession on 28 April 1889. In 1904 she was elected as the Mother Superior of the convent and remained in that position until 1907. In Kraków she opened a home for female college students and at that time it proved to be a new phenomenon. The nun often spent hours in Eucharistic Adoration. With a special blessing of Pope Pius X she went to Saint Petersburg in Russia where she worked to build up the Saint Catharine House which was a residence for Polish children and adolescents that were living there at the behest of its pastor Konstantin Budkiewicz. The nun was forced to wear civil clothes since because Roman Catholic institutions were illegal in the Russian Empire. Once the tsarist government oppression to the faith grew she moved to the Russian-controlled Finland where she translated songs and a catechism for the Finnish fishermen who were Protestants for the most part. The religious also set up a free clinic for ill people as well as for the fishermen and their families. But her apostolic zeal soon attracted undue attention for the Russians began to monitor her moves and decided that enough was enough. In 1914 she was expelled from the Russian Empire and sought refuge in neutral Sweden though still kept in touch with the religious who remained in Russia. While in Sweden she committed herself to ecumenism and to that end worked alongside the Lutheran archbishop Nathan Söderblom. In 1915 she set up the newspaper "Solglimtar". In 1916 she met the writer Ellen Key.
Ledóchowska settled in Stockholm and started a language school and a domestic science school for girls while there in 1917 published the book "Polonica" in three different languages. In Denmark in 1918 she founded an orphanage and a school of home economics in Aalborg. In 1920 she returned to Poland with 40 other nuns who had joined her in her mission and with permission from Rome changed her independent convent in Pniewy into the Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus which she founded on 7 June 1920. It was in Poland that the apostolic nuncio Achille Ratti - future Pope Pius XI - encouraged and blessed her work. In 1928 she founded a religious center in Rome where she had been living for sometime after Pope Benedict XV had invited her to manage the order there at the beginning of that decade. In 1930 she sent 30 nuns to female Polish workers in France. Ledóchowska was a noted orator who often called for and defended the right for Polish independence; she spoke in various forums and often addressed national leaders and fellow nobles from time to time.
In mid-1939 she died in Rome in her convent at Via del Casaletto due to a carcinoma. The religious noticed that she had not come to the Vespers and so knocked on her door before finding her dead with a rosary in her hand. Her incorrupt remains were translated to the convent in Pniewy on 29 May 1989. In 2005 her order had 832 religious in 98 houses in countries such as Canada and the Philippines amongst others; it received papal approval on 4 June 1923.
Sainthood
Tomb in Poland.
The canonization process opened in the Diocese of Rome in an informative process that spanned from 16 March 1949 until 9 April 1957 once the investigations had been completed though two separate processes were held; one was held in Kraków from 23 June 1950 to 2 June 1951 while the other was held in Viviers from 13 May 1931 until 28 May 1951. Her writings were all collated and had to be investigated to determine that such writings adhered to official doctrine; the theologians who viewed them approved them on 12 July 1966. The formal introduction of the cause did not come until 15 October 1981 when she was titled as a Servant of God. The apostolic process was dispensed with so the findings of the investigation thus far were sent to Rome to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints who validated these processes on 10 December 1982. The C.C.S. and their consultants approved the Positio dossier on 18 January 1983 while the C.C.S. alone gave their independent approval on 29 March 1983. On 14 May 1983 she was named as Venerable after Pope John Paul II confirmed that she had lived a model Christian life of heroic virtue.
Ledóchowska's beatification depended on two miracles prior to the 1983 alterations and as such two cases - both in Kraków - were investigated. The first was investigated from 27 September 1971 until 17 February 1972 and the other was investigated from 16 April 1973 until 26 February 1974. These processes received C.C.S. validation on 10 December 1982 before a medical board of experts approved these miracles on 7 April 1983. Theologians likewise issued their approval on 17 May 1983 as did the C.C.S. on 7 June 1983. John Paul II granted the final authorization to it on 9 June 1983 and beatified the late nun while visiting Poznań on 20 June 1983.
One final miracle was needed for full sainthood and the case was investigated in Poland from 16 April 1998 until 26 June 1998 before receiving C.C.S. validation on 17 October 1998. The medical experts approved this case on 30 March 2000 as did the theologians on 1 February 2002 and the C.C.S. on 12 March 2002. John Paul II approved this - and the canonization - on 23 April 2002 while formalizing the date for the sainthood at a consistory of Rome-based cardinals on 7 March 2003. John Paul II canonized her in Saint Peter's Square on 18 May 2003 before a crowd of 50 000 people.
Miracles
The first miracle that led to her beatification involved the cure of Jan Kołodziejski on 26 March 1946 while the second miracle leading to beatification involved the cure of the nun (from Ledóchowska's own order) Magdalene Pawlak (in religious "Maria Danuta") on 16 April 1946. The decisive miracle that led to her canonization was the cure of Daniel Gajewski (b. 1982) who avoided electrocution in circumstances where he would otherwise have been killed had it not been for the late nun whom he saw moments before fading into unconsciousness on 2 August 1996.
Patronage
Since 2006 she has been the patron saint of Sieradz and since 2016 has been the patron of Pniewy. Ledóchowska is also the patron saint of Polish girls as well as orphans and educators.
