Wanda Olędzka was born in 1861 in Merano (a town in Italy) as the daughter of Władysław and Amelia née Bącewicz. Her life was marked by the cross from her very childhood. Shortly after her birth, she lost her mother. She spent the first years of her life in a boarding house in Wrocław.
In August 1867 she was admitted to a boarding school run by the Visitation Sisters in Cracow, where she stayed for at least 11 years. There she received a proper education and a thorough religious upbringing. When she was 17 years old, her father died, and in 1888 two more members of the family, with whom she was very close, passed away: her uncle, Rev. Julian Olędzki, and her aunt, Maria Olędzka-Elzenberg.
The community of the Visitation Sisters in Krakow spread the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the devotion for the souls in purgatory. Perhaps Wanda’s desire to help the dead suffering in purgatory was born at that time, which was probably strengthened by the experience of the death of her loved ones. She wanted to fulfill her vocation by entering the Congregation of the Sisters Help of Christians in Purgatory in France. In order to discern God’s will more fully, she turned for advice to the then well-known confessor, Father Honorat Kozminski, now Blessed.
Her spiritual father suggested that she stay in Poland and co-create a similar congregation in Poland. In this way, on November 10, 1889, the Congregation of the Sisters Help of Christians in Purgatory was established in Zakroczym, whose main task was to help the deceased.
Its first members, led by Wanda, devoted themselves to the service of the sick and the poor, and offered the related effort, combined with prayer, for the dead suffering in purgatory. While ministering to the sick during the typhus epidemic in Zakroczym, Mother Wanda herself contracted it. The effects of his illness made it impossible to continue to lead the young religious community. She was taken by her family. She spent the last years of her life in Lublin. She died there on 23 January 1915 and was buried in the cemetery at Lipowa Street.
Published by: Wanda Maria Olędzka.pdf
The above document contains over 75 references to the Visitation Nuns and their Academy in Poland