Suggest an Edit — Franciszka Siedliska

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Biography

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Franciszka Siedliska was born on 12 November 1842 at Roszkowa Wola, a village in central Poland then under the Russian partition of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to Adolf Siedliski and Cecylia Morawska, members of the Polish landed nobility. She was a frail and frequently ill child, and her early years were spent in a household that, while culturally Catholic, was not especially devout. The family later lived in various places as they sought to improve her health and manage their affairs. In adolescence she underwent a deepening of Christian faith and came to feel a strong call to religious life, a vocation that met with determined opposition from her father.

After her father's death she was free to pursue that vocation. Guided by spiritual directors and with the encouragement of church authorities, she went to Rome, where in the 1870s she founded a new congregation dedicated to the Holy Family of Nazareth. Taking the religious name Mary of Jesus the Good Shepherd (Maria od Pana Jezusa Dobrego Pasterza), she sought to form sisters who would serve families, educate children, care for the sick and the poor, and support parish life, with a particular concern for the spiritual and material needs of the family. Pope Pius IX received her and gave his blessing to the undertaking. The Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth (Congregatio Sororum Sacrae Familiae de Nazareth) received diocesan and later pontifical approval as it grew.

Mother Siedliska established houses first in Rome and then in her native Poland, as well as in France and England. In 1885 she sent sisters to the United States, beginning in the Chicago area, to minister among Polish immigrants and others in need of education, healthcare, and parish support. She herself crossed the Atlantic more than once to visit and strengthen the American foundations. The congregation expanded through her lifetime despite her continuing poor health and the political difficulties facing the Catholic Church in partitioned Poland.

She died in Rome on 21 November 1902. The Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth continued to grow after her death and remain active in multiple countries. Pope John Paul II beatified her on 23 April 1989 under her religious name, Blessed Mary of Jesus the Good Shepherd. Her liturgical memorial is observed on 21 November. She has not been canonized.

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