Servant of God Helena Kmieć

Helena Agnieszka Kmieć (9 February 1991 – 24 January 2017) was a Polish Catholic missionary who was awarded the Polish Gold Cross of Merit. In May 2024, her sainthood cause was opened and she was named a Servant of God. Helena Agnieszka Kmieć was born on 9 February 1991 in Kraków. She was baptized on 14 April 1991 at St. Barbara's Church in Libiąż. She was related to Bishop Jan Zając, who was the brother of her grandfather. Helena's parents, father Jan from Libiąż and mother Agnieszka from Kraków, met while building a church in Olcza, Zakopane. Agnieszka died when Helena was six weeks old. She and her older sister were raised by their stepmother, Barbara. She graduated from the High School of the Catholic Association of Educators in Libiąż. She was a scholarship holder of the Leweston School in Sherborne, UK, where she obtained her high school diploma, at the same time pursuing an individual course of study in her high school, from which she graduated in 2009. In 2014, she obtained a master's degree in engineering at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Silesian University of Technology, where she studied technology and chemical engineering in English. After graduating, she worked as a flight attendant for an airline. She was active in the academic chaplaincy in Gliwice and sang in the Academic Choir of the Silesian University of Technology. Since 2012, she was a volunteer as part of the Missionary Volunteer Service "Salvator" in Trzebinia. She organized day camps for children at the parishes of the Salvatorian Fathers in Galgahévíz, Hungary and in Timișoara, Romania. On Friday, 6 July 2012, as part of evangelization at the railway station in Wrocław, she sang Listen, Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is the only one. In 2013, during the mission in Zambia, she worked with children and young people at the Salvation Home center in Lusaka and at the Kulanga Bana Farm youth center in Chamulimba, a village in Chongwe District.