Maria Marta Kazimiera Wołowska

Who they were

Casimira Wolowska, born at Lublin in 1879, entered the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in 1900, taking the name Sister Maria Marta di Gesù. As a young superior she ran an orphanage at Maciejów for Polish, Ukrainian and Russian children from Siberia, opening schools for them, and in 1939 became superior of the community at Slonim just before the Second World War began.

Under Soviet and then Nazi occupation she worked to help prisoners, the persecuted and the hungry, even after being warned she was on a watch list; she chose to stay at her post rather than flee. Arrested overnight on 18-19 December 1942 together with Sister Maria Eva of Providence, she was taken the next morning to a hill outside Slonim and shot in hatred of the faith. She was beatified by John Paul II in 1999 among 108 Polish martyrs.

The miracles

As a martyr she was raised to the altars without a miracle.

Why that counted as sanctity

Polish nun shot with a companion outside Slonim on 19 December 1942 for sheltering prisoners and the persecuted under Nazi occupation; beatified in 1999.