Blessed Maria Theresia Haze

Jeanne Haze (27 February 1782 – 7 January 1876), also known by her religious name Marie-Thérèse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was a Belgian Roman Catholic professed religious and the foundress of the Daughters of the Cross. Haze decided to respond to the lack of education in her homeland in the chaos resulting from the French Revolution and made that the focus of her religious apostolate; she served as her order's Superior General from its founding until her death. Her beatification cause opened in 1911 under Pope Pius X while Pope Pius XII later titled her as Venerable in 1941; Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1991. Jeanne Haze was born in Liége in 1782 as one of seven children. Her father served as the aide to the Prince-bishop who ruled the area. Once the French forces occupied the Low Countries in 1794 her father decided to move himself and his relations to the German Empire for safe haven where he would die. In her childhood she developed and cultivated a strong devotion to the Passion of Christ. At age four she could read and write. Once peace had been established their return to Belgium was assured but their experiences had left Haze and her sister Ferdinande with a strong empathetic spirit to the sufferings of the neediest people. Their mother died in 1820 and the two sisters felt called to enter a religious order though the anti-monastic laws then in effect under the United Kingdom of the Netherlands prevented that from occurring. Instead the sisters decided to follow a religious form of life in their own home and opened a small school in 1824 to support themselves. In 1829 the local pastor – the Canon Cloes who was the Dean of the Collegiate Church of Saint Bartholomew – asked their help in educating the girls of the area who were suffering from the lack of schooling then widespread as a consequence of the occupation. The sisters accepted the challenge and opened a free school in the home of the curate of the parish Canon Jean-Guillaume Habets.