Franziska Streitel

Franziska Streitel, born Amalia Streitel, was a German Catholic religious sister and foundress of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother. She was born on 24 November 1844 in Mellrichstadt, in Lower Franconia in the Kingdom of Bavaria, and was raised in a Catholic family. After receiving an education that prepared her for teaching, she entered religious life in 1866 in the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Maria Stern at Augsburg, taking the name Sister Angela. For a number of years she served as a teacher in that congregation’s schools. Seeking a stricter and more contemplative Franciscan observance than her first community provided, she obtained permission in the early 1880s to leave Maria Stern.

In 1883 she went to Rome at the invitation of the priest Johann Baptist Jordan (later known as Francis Mary of the Cross Jordan), founder of the Society of the Divine Savior, who was then trying to establish a corresponding congregation of women. Streitel took part in the first years of that project, but the two differed over the character of the new institute. Jordan envisioned a broadly apostolic teaching society; Streitel, formed in the Franciscan tradition, insisted on evangelical poverty, a stronger contemplative element, and devotion to the Sorrowful Mother. By 1885 the collaboration had ended. She then founded an independent congregation, the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother (Congregatio Sororum a Matre Dolorosa), whose members were to unite contemplative prayer with active works of mercy, especially care of the sick and the education of children. She is commonly known in religion as Maria Franziska of the Cross.

Under her direction the community obtained ecclesiastical approval and began to spread from Rome. Houses were opened in Italy, and in the late nineteenth century sisters of the congregation went to the United States, where they became known for hospital work and schools. The early decades of the institute were marked by poverty and by internal and canonical difficulties. Like several other nineteenth-century foundresses, Streitel experienced tension with church authorities over the government of her congregation and spent her later years withdrawn from central administration, living in relative obscurity while the community continued its work.

She died on 6 March 1911 at Castel Sant'Elia, north of Rome, where a house of the congregation was located, and was buried there. After her death the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother continued to expand and later received fuller papal recognition. The congregation remains active in several countries. A cause for her beatification has been promoted by her institute, but she has not been beatified or canonized. Within her congregation she is remembered as a determined foundress who sought to join Franciscan poverty and devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows with service to the sick and the poor in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.