Every year we have been sharing the various connections between the European Visitation Sisters and the Divine Mercy devotion, painting and St. Faustina, especially from Lithuania and Poland.
This year we introduce you to a 100 year old Visitandine in Poland who met both St. Faustina, it is surmised, and with certainty, her Confessor, Blessed Michael Sopocko.
She is Sister Maria Kasimiera, 100 years old as of December 19, 2020, from the Rybnik Monastery in Poland, an “extern” Sister.
She met the apostles of Divine Mercy, Fr. Sopoćko and Sister Faustina.
As an “Out Sister”, she was able to go outside the gates of the enclosed monastery, and she met many people. On her way, she also met Blessed Father Michał Sopoćko, the confessor of Sister Faustina Kowalska. – She probably also had contact with Sister Faustina herself. When Faustina was dying, Sister Kazimiera was 18 years old – notes Fr. Marek Bernacki, pastor of Saint Anthony’s Basilica in Rybnik. About meetings with Fr. Michał Sopoćko, St. Faustina’s confessor, Sister Kazimiera also told the family of Benedykt Łukoszek, faithful of the parish of St. Anthony. – In the years 1938 – 1942, Sister Kazimiera met Fr. Michał Sopoćko, who preached formation conferences for the Sisters. She told how they admired his piety, it made a great impression on the young sisters. She also told how Father Sopoćko knelt down and began to pray the chaplet of the Divine Mercy – says Benedykt Łukoszek.
Sister Kasimiera herself had quite an interesting life.
The daughter of Rozalia and Józef was born on December 19, 1920 in the small village of Trzeciakowce (now Belarus). She had 4 brothers: Jan, Stanisław, Władysław and Bolesław. At the age of 3, Józefa became an orphan. After her mother died, she was brought up by her aunt. – The family was very close to the church. Susanna, her baptismal name, was brought as a candidate to the monastery by the parish priest from Lida. She was about 18 years old. The fact that the priest brought the candidate to the monastery was characteristic in that period and in that area – says the Mother Superior of the Convent of the Visitationists in Rybnik. She adds that the priest (and in this case – as Sister Kazimiera once recalled – is Father Wincenty Łaban from the parish of the Most Holy Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lida) had a great influence on families. It was a special time, a time of war.
At the beginning of 1942, together with other sisters and candidates, she was arrested and sent to prison. – The beautiful, large monastery in Vilnius had been closed. The sisters were to be shot, therefore the candidates who were being prepared for vows took their vows in prison. Sister Kazimiera took her vows on February 2, 1942, before the planned execution, says Mother Superior. She adds that God’s Providence meant otherwise. –
After a month the decision was changed and the sisters were released from prison with the condition to remove their habits and return to their family homes. The sisters who were already in the convent realized that the ruling order was not binding for them and therefore, after agreeing with the superior, they dispersed to their friends, says Mother Superior. In the memoirs of one of the sisters, who was also in Rybnik (she died at the age of 102), she tells that when the sisters met after this “undressing” of their habits and how they came to the agreed place near the church – they laughed for a long time at how they looked. They did not have secular attire prepared – that’s why they put on whatever whoever gave them. They couldn’t recognize each other. Dressed in civilian clothes, the sisters met regularly, prayed and worked in various activities.
Sister Kazimiera once mentioned to Bendykt Łukoszek and his wife, the inhabitants of Rybnik, who know her well, that after the roundup in 1942, her sister was to be taken to work in Germany, but the commission decided that she was not fit to leave because she was in poor health. – That’s why she worked as a maid for Lithuanian families, incl. with the Wasilewski family – a doctor and a lawyer.
Wanting to avoid reprisals by the Russians after the war, the sisters fled to Warsaw. They didn’t go all together, only 2 or 3, often in cattle cars. The Visitation Sisters organized a monastery in Siemianowice, and then had to leave it … When they returned to Poland at the beginning of the 1950s (sister Kazimiera first stayed in Warsaw with the Visitation Sisters, where she looked after a sick person), there was no monastery where they could stay together. That is why they were assigned the rectory of the Evangelical-Augsburg church in Siemianowice Śląskie, in which they could arrange their monastery. – As soon as the sisters were allowed to take over the rectory and the church, the work began. Everything was destroyed there, the presbytery was not adapted to a religious house. Kazimer’s sister came from Warsaw and immediately began to bustle. She was a sacristan. The sisters, with the help of people, rebuilt the church in Siemianowice and then had to leave it and give it to the Evangelicals. Everyone, the bishops, tried very hard to keep it. They even went to the Holy Father – but he said to give it back to them, that they would have peace.
And that’s how it happened. We left the church immediately and came to Rybnik – recalls Mother Superior. A monastery in the middle of a bustling Rybnik SHe recalls that the building that now houses the Visitation Monastery in Rybnik was an ordinary house in the middle of a bustling city. Let us recall that the monastery is located on Brudnioka Street, and until recently there was … a disco next to it. -When we came to Rybnik, there were 28 sisters of us then. You had to work hard to fit them here. That is why there are such small rooms in the building today. There is a chapel that did not exist. Here was a normal house of Our Lady of Sorrows parish. Bishop Damian Zimoń was very happy when the monastery was established here. He came from here, remembers Mother Superior.
Sister Kazimiera experienced the arrival to Rybnik tremendously. She was very close to the monastery in Siemianowice Śląskie and to people from there. – People from Siemianowice used to come to her by cars, buses, they came here. They stayed at the church. People loved Kazimiera very much. She was “external”, so she went to people, something happened, some misfortune, some problem, she was there to help. People are very closely associated with her, says Mother Superior, adding that on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of her birth, sister Kazimiera received a lot of letters. Stefan Sowa, a former altar boy from Siemianowice Śląskie, who speaks very warmly about Sister Kazimiersa mentions that she suggested to the altar servers to consider choosing the path of priestly life. – Probably thanks to prayer, and maybe also at the urging of the sister, three people from the group of altar boys became priests – Fr. Adam Pradela, Father Boguchwał – Zbigniew Orczyk, and Fr. Mateusz Iwaniecki) – explains Stefan Sowa.
with pictures at above link