Angela Truszkowska

Angela Truszkowska was born Sophia Camille Truszkowska (Zofia Kamila Truszkowska) on 16 May 1825 in Kalisz, in the Russian-controlled Kingdom of Poland. She was the eldest child of Józef Truszkowski, a lawyer, and Józefa (née Rudzińska). The family later settled in Warsaw, where she received a careful private education. Frail health marked her youth: recurrent illness interrupted her studies and at times forced her to leave the city to convalesce. In her early twenties she underwent a deepening of religious life and turned from the social expectations of her class toward prayer and works of mercy among the poor of Warsaw.

Drawn to the example of Saint Vincent de Paul, she joined the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul and began visiting the sick and destitute. Together with her cousin Clothilde Ciechanowska she gathered abandoned children and elderly women into rented rooms, forming the nucleus of a religious community. On 21 November 1855, before an icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa, the two women consecrated themselves to the Mother of God; this date is kept as the foundation of the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Felix of Cantalice, known as the Felician Sisters. Under the spiritual guidance of the Capuchin priest Honorat Koźmiński, Sophia took the religious name Angela (Mary Angela) and, with her companions, received the Franciscan habit. The new institute combined contemplative prayer with active service to orphans, the aged, and the sick, and it spread rapidly through the Polish lands in the mid-nineteenth century.

The January Uprising of 1863 against Russian rule brought both an expansion of the sisters’ charitable work and political suspicion. In 1864 the imperial authorities suppressed the congregation in the Russian partition, dispersing or imprisoning many sisters. Mother Angela transferred the surviving community to Kraków in Austrian Galicia, where the Felicians were able to re-establish a motherhouse and continue their apostolate of education and care for the needy. She served as superior general until 1869, when progressive deafness and chronic illness led her to resign the office.

For the remaining three decades of her life she lived in the Kraków convent, taking part in community prayer as her health allowed and offering her sufferings for the congregation she had founded. She died in Kraków on 10 October 1899. Pope John Paul II beatified her on 18 April 1993; she has not been canonized. Her liturgical memorial is observed on 10 October. The Felician Sisters, who later established provinces in North America and elsewhere, regard her as their foundress.