Łucja Szewczyk

Łucja Szewczyk, known in religion as Małgorzata, was born in 1828 in Szepetówka in Volhynia, then in the Russian Empire and now Shepetivka in Ukraine. She belonged to a Polish family and was orphaned while still young, after which relatives raised her and she knew poverty from an early age. In adulthood she became a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis and took the name Małgorzata. Her Franciscan vocation was one of humble service rather than cloistered withdrawal: she devoted herself to the poor, the sick, and the abandoned, especially in the Warsaw region in the later nineteenth century, under the Russian partition of Poland.

After the January Uprising of 1863–1864, Tsarist policy suppressed many Catholic religious houses, so organized consecrated life was both urgently needed and legally precarious. Szewczyk cared for the elderly, the homeless, and the ill, including in times of epidemic, and gathered other women who wished to live a life of mercy while remaining outwardly indistinguishable from laypersons. In that setting she worked with the Capuchin friar Blessed Honorat Koźmiński, a principal organizer of so-called hidden congregations that could survive without public religious dress or open convents.

In 1881, at Zakroczym, she founded with Koźmiński the community that became the Congregation of the Daughters of the Sorrowful Mother of God, known as the Seraphic Sisters. The sisters professed a Franciscan spirit, devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows, and service to those most neglected. Because imperial law forbade many forms of religious life, they at first wore secular clothing and lived without public recognition as a religious institute. Szewczyk was the foundress and first superior, forming the community around poverty, obedience, and practical works of mercy such as nursing and the care of orphans and the aged. When circumstances allowed, the congregation developed more openly in Austrian-ruled Galicia, where Catholic orders faced fewer restrictions.

She spent her last years in Nieszawa and died there on 5 June 1905. The Catholic Church later recognized her heroic virtue. She was beatified on 9 June 2013; Cardinal Angelo Amato celebrated the rite in Poland in the name of Pope Francis. Her liturgical memorial is kept on 5 June. She is remembered as a foundress who sustained consecrated life under restriction and as a model of hidden, persevering charity among the poorest.