The Congregation, commonly known as the Sisters of Mary’s Heart, was founded on 8 December 1885 by Blessed Fr Honorat Koźmiński, a Capuchin, together with Mother Paula Malecka, under the exceptionally difficult conditions of russian imperial rule.
Through his clandestine pastoral ministry, Fr Honorat saw that many young women and men wished to consecrate their lives to God but could not do so in their homeland. He was saddened that so many wonderful people, needed at home, would have to go abroad or be unable to follow their vocation. The Capuchin therefore began founding congregations whose members did not wear a religious habit — communities not required to wear distinctive clothing identifying their membership. He sought vocations from different social groups so that the Gospel could reach as wide a circle of people as possible.
In naming the Congregation the Daughters of the Most Pure Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Fr Honorat set out its programme: to communicate the purest love of Mary’s Heart to the world through the education and upbringing of children and young people. After making her vows in Zakroczym, Paula Malecka began putting his vision into practice. In the eastern territories of the russian tsardom and central Poland, she opened orphanages, schools, boarding houses, dining rooms for poor children and sewing workshops for poor girls, where thousands of children and young people received care, education and the means to earn a living. In 1909, at the invitation of the parish priest, Fr Kazimierz Nosalewski, Mother Paula established the first house in Proskuriv on Hlukha Street. Sr Brunona Bibenau became superior of the new community. The sisters established a residential institution for 45 girls and a sewing workshop. Attached to the workshop was a dressmaking school where catechism and other subjects were taught secretly, as well as a dormitory for the girls. One sister recalled: “One day, the gendarmes arrived unexpectedly to inspect the school, and the girls studying there barely had time to hide. Secret teaching carried severe penalties. One girl hid under a bed, but her plaits were sticking out. When a gendarme noticed the hair, he came over to me and said, ‘If you hide the girls, hide their plaits too.’ Even among the gendarmes there were kind people who helped us in dangerous situations.” In 1914, a hospital was opened for wounded soldiers arriving from the front. A shelter for poor and homeless children was also established and run by the sisters. It cared for 150 boys and girls of different ages. The sisters’ work in Proskuriv developed until 1920, when Bolshevik repression began. Under legislation passed in 1918, educational and childcare institutions in russia came under Bolshevik control. Persecution by the new authorities gradually forced almost all the sisters to leave their workplaces in Proskuriv, which were taken over by the state, and move to Poland. As communist power consolidated in the newly formed Soviet Union, the Church entered years of hardship and terrible persecution. St Anne’s Church was closed in 1936 and dismantled and blown up in 1937–1938. Sisters Teklia Demychkivska and Rozaliia Kozak, childhood friends of the same age who had remained to work at the parish, were arrested in 1934. After an investigation, they were exiled to Kazakhstan. Only in 1954, after Stalin’s death, did they return to their native Proskuriv, now called Khmelnytskyi. Life in Kazakhstan was destitute, yet even there the sisters experienced the Lord’s wondrous care. They never forgot to praise God in prayer and work and continued to foster the Congregation’s growth. Once, despite the risk of encountering spies, Sisters Teklia and Rozaliia invited two young women they had met by chance at the market into the hut they had built themselves. An image of Mary’s Heart painted by Sr Teklia was already hanging inside. On seeing it, one of the young women said, “Honour to Mary’s Heart…!” and Sr Teklia completed the Congregation’s motto: “…from us and the whole world!” In this way, all four discovered that they belonged to the same congregation. The two young women were biological sisters who had been exiled to Kazakhstan with their families.
After returning to Khmelnytskyi, Sisters Teklia and Rozaliia began working at the revived St Anne’s Parish in the Hrechany district, secretly gathering and catechising children and young people and serving in the sacristy. The Congregation’s life began to revive and new vocations emerged, although the beginning was difficult. The sisters had no contact with the General House in Poland, possessed only one or two breviaries and lacked spiritual literature. The arrival in Ukraine of the Vicar General, Mother Teresa Wójcicka, brought great joy. From then on, she brought spiritual books, taught the sisters about religious life and encouraged them. In 1979, she appointed Sr Leokadiia Veselska superior in Khmelnytskyi. At that time, the sisters lived at 13 Zaliznychna Street. Living their religious life in secret, they officially worked in state institutions and devoted all their free time to the Church and the Congregation: prayer, adoration, helping organise parish services, decorating the church with flowers and making candles for processions. Despite close surveillance by the authorities, they managed to maintain contact with children and young people and provide catechesis. New vocations among local young women led to the decision to buy another house in the Rakovo district, near the military hospital. Days of recollection, confession and other activities took place there. Meanwhile, the faithful from different parts of Khmelnytskyi had long been asking Fr Vytautas Merkis, parish priest of St Anne’s, to establish another parish and build a new church. Communist repression of the Church was beginning to ease. Fr Vytautas chose a beautiful site in the Vystavka district, and in 1990, with God’s help and the support of good people, permission was obtained to buy the land for construction. A chapel was first established in one of the small houses on the site, and the Sisters of Mary’s Heart immediately began serving there. In the new parish, they catechised children and young people, cleaned the chapel and undertook other necessary tasks. When the new Church of Christ the King of the Universe was built, they continued their ministry there. Later, in 2006, a new house was built on the church grounds, which the sisters use as a family-type children’s home.
The Congregation’s centre is currently in Poland. The sisters also work in Belarus, Lithuania, Germany, France, Italy and Brazil.
In Ukraine, the Sisters of Mary’s Heart care for four children’s homes — in Yarmolyntsi, Kyiv, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi — raising 37 children. With the sisters, orphaned children have found a new family and hearts filled with God’s love. The Congregation’s Constitutions emphasise that the sisters’ apostolate consists in offering an example of Christian life through the witness of their presence. The tasks entrusted to them by their founders, Mother Paula and Fr Honorat, include work in schools and institutions of secondary and higher education; teaching in seminaries; educating children and young people in kindergartens, boarding schools and other care institutions; catechesis; caring for children in their parents’ absence; and acts of Christian charity. Through a genuinely evangelical life, they encourage others to keep God’s commandments and live as Christians.
The Congregation of the Sisters of Mary’s Heart asks God, through the Most Pure Heart of Mary, that the community may remain faithful to its charism and grow for God’s glory and the good of those to whom the Lord sends the sisters.
Information from the website of Christ the King of the Universe, Khmelnytskyi: www.sercanki-honorat.org.ua