Hendrina Stenmanns

Hendrina Stenmanns was born on 28 May 1852 in Issum, a village in the Lower Rhine region of the Kingdom of Prussia in Germany. She was the eldest child of the miller Wilhelm Stenmanns and Anna Maria Heijnen and was raised in a devout Catholic family with several younger siblings. From an early age she was known for piety, diligence, and a desire to give her life to God. She earned her living as a silk weaver, a common trade in that part of the Rhineland, and became a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis. After her mother’s death in 1878 she took charge of the household and delayed her own religious plans out of duty to her father and brothers and sisters.

Attracted by the missionary work begun by the priest Arnold Janssen at his mission house in Steyl in the Netherlands, she sought to join the group of women gathering there to serve the missions. She arrived in Steyl in 1884 and at first performed humble domestic work, especially in the kitchen of the Divine Word seminary. Together with Helena Stollenwerk and under Janssen’s guidance she became a co-foundress of the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit, a congregation established on 8 December 1889 to support the missionary apostolate through education, nursing, and pastoral service. In religion she received the name Sister Josepha and is commonly remembered as Mother Josepha.

As the young community grew she assumed increasing responsibility for the formation and government of the sisters. When Helena Stollenwerk transferred to the newly founded cloistered congregation of the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters toward the end of the 1890s, Josepha Stenmanns became superior of the active missionary sisters and led them as superior general until her death. She was remembered for practical wisdom, maternal care, and fidelity to a charism of service in the Holy Spirit. Under this early leadership the congregation expanded and began to send sisters to missionary territories.

Her health failed in her last years; she suffered from kidney disease that produced dropsy. She died in Steyl on 20 May 1903, shortly before her fifty-first birthday, and was buried at the sisters’ motherhouse there. A reputation for holiness continued in the congregation. The cause for her beatification proceeded in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and she was beatified on 29 June 2008 in a ceremony in the Diocese of Roermond authorized by Pope Benedict XVI. The Church commemorates Blessed Hendrina Stenmanns (Mother Josepha) on 20 May. She has not been canonized.