Helena Stollenwerk

Anna Helena Stollenwerk was born on 28 November 1852 in the village of Rollesbroich in the Eifel region of the Rhineland, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. She was raised in a devout Catholic farming family of modest means and from childhood conceived a desire to serve as a missionary, especially in China, a hope fed by missionary periodicals and by the Association of the Holy Childhood. After the limited schooling available to a rural girl of her station, she worked at home and in the fields. She became a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis and sought admission to several congregations that undertook foreign missions, but she was not accepted, in part because few institutes then sent women overseas. She therefore remained in her village, combining farm labor with a life of prayer while her missionary vocation stayed unfulfilled.

In 1882 she went to Steyl in the Netherlands, where the priest Arnold Janssen had opened a mission seminary in 1875 that became the Society of the Divine Word. Janssen was not yet prepared to found a women’s congregation, so Stollenwerk and other women were received as domestic workers at the mission house. For years she served principally in the kitchen, accepting obscure labor as the will of God and as a school of humility. On 8 December 1889 Janssen formally established the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit. Stollenwerk, together with Hendrina Stenmanns, belonged to the first group of sisters. She was given charge of the formation of the early novices and became the congregation’s first superior, known as Mother Maria. The young community was shaped by a Trinitarian spirituality and by docility to the Holy Spirit, in keeping with Janssen’s charism. The institute grew, and sisters were prepared for work abroad, though Stollenwerk herself never received a mission assignment overseas.

Obedience defined the last chapter of her life. In 1896 Janssen founded a second women’s institute, the cloistered Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration, whose members would support the missions by perpetual Eucharistic adoration. In 1898 he asked Mother Maria to leave the active missionary sisters and enter this enclosed community. The request ran counter to her lifelong wish for active missionary service, yet she complied. She entered the cloister at Steyl, received the name Sister Maria Virgo, and spent her remaining time in adoration and hidden sacrifice. Her health declined, and she died in Steyl on 3 February 1900 at the age of forty-seven.

The two Holy Spirit sisterhoods kept her memory. The cause for her beatification proceeded, and on 7 May 1995 Pope John Paul II declared her blessed in Saint Peter’s Square. She has not been canonized. The Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit, which she helped to found, became an international congregation engaged in education, healthcare, and pastoral work. Within the Divine Word family she is remembered as a co-foundress who waited long years in humble service, formed the first missionary sisters, and then surrendered even that work when asked to embrace a contemplative life.