Bl. Marcelina Darowska

  Posted on January 12, 2019  by admin  No comments

Born: 28 January 1827 at Szulaki, Poland (now in Ukraine) as Marcelina Kotowicz

Died: 5 January 1911 at Jazlowiec, Poland (now in Ukraine) of natural causes

Beatified: 6 October 1996 by Pope John Paul II

Born to a land-owning Polish family, Marcellina was a pious child with a love of prayer. Though she would have preferred a religious life, she promised her dying father that she would marry and raise a family. Married Karol Darowski in 1849, and sanctified her marriage “by living only in God and for God.” Karol died less than 3 years later, leaving her a widowed mother of two. Her son died a year later, and she wrote, “The way of the world was not chosen for me by God’s will; the way of the convent was, indeed, my destiny.”

She traveled to Rome, Italy in 1854 for reasons of health, and there met Father Hieronim Kajsiewicz, a Resurrectionist who became her spiritual director. Through him she met Josephine Karska, who wished to found a religious community dedicated to the overall formation of women. The result was the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Josephine suffered with typhus for years, and died in 1860, leaving Marcelina as Superior of the new religious family, which numbered no more than four. In 1863 Marcelina moved them to her homeland. At Jazlowiec, Archdiocese of Lviv, Ukraine, she opened her first school for girls. It soon became an important spiritual and cultural center.

Marcelina approached women’s education believing that on it depends the re-birth of the family, the foundation of a morally healthy society. She stressed the following to sisters and students: the primacy of God over everything, truth, mutual trust, and unselfishness. She offered help to the poor, working for tuition-free elementary schools at every convent. During her 50 years as Superior she opened seven convents with formation institutes and schools for children.