Suggest an Edit — Marija Petković

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Biography

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Marija Petković was born on 10 December 1892 in Blato on the island of Korčula in Dalmatia, then part of Austria-Hungary and today in Croatia. She was the sixth of eleven children of Antun Petković-Kovač and Marija Marinović and grew up in a devout Catholic farming family. She received her schooling in her native town and from an early age took part in parish life. In 1906 she became president of the local Congregation of the Daughters of Mary, and she later helped found the Society of Catholic Mothers. During the First World War she organized assistance for the poor, the sick, and orphaned children on the island, work that formed the practical core of her later vocation.

On 25 March 1919 she made a private vow of chastity. With the approval of Bishop Josip Marčelić of Dubrovnik she founded, on 25 August 1920, a new religious family, the Congregation of the Daughters of Mercy of the Third Order of Saint Francis, taking the name Marija of the Crucified Jesus. The sisters devoted themselves to the Christian education of children and young people, to the care of the elderly and the abandoned, and to other works of mercy, in a Franciscan spirit centered on the Eucharist and devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Petković served as the congregation’s first superior general and wrote spiritual instructions and conferences for her sisters.

The institute spread from Dalmatia to other parts of the South Slavic lands and, from 1940, to Latin America. Petković herself traveled to Argentina to establish houses and to work among Croatian emigrants as well as the local poor; further foundations followed in other South American countries. She spent much of her later life in Rome, directing the congregation and visiting its communities despite declining health, including serious trouble with her eyesight.

Marija Petković died in Rome on 9 July 1966. She was first buried in the Campo Verano cemetery; her remains were later transferred to the chapel of the general house of the Daughters of Mercy in Rome. Pope John Paul II beatified her on 6 June 2003 in Dubrovnik during an apostolic visit to Croatia, presenting her as a witness of evangelical charity and Franciscan service. Her liturgical memorial is kept on 9 July. The congregation she founded continues its apostolate in Europe and the Americas.

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