Saint Ursula Ledóchowska

Julia Ledóchowska, USAHJ (17 April 1865 – 29 May 1939), in religion Maria Ursula of Jesus, was a Polish Catholic religious sister who founded 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. She continued to found convents across Scandinavian countries and even translated a Finnish catechism. She later founded her order, which she managed from Rome at the behest of Pope Benedict XV. Her death brought calls for a sainthood process, which was opened in 1981 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 her in Saint Peter's Square in 2003. 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 and his second wife Countess Josephine Salis-Zizers. Mieczysław Cardinal Halka-Ledóchowski was her paternal uncle. Due to financial reverses in 1874 all relocated to Sankt Pölten, Austria where she and her sister Maria Theresia 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 Maria Ursula of Jesus; she made her perpetual vows on 28 April 1889.