By Sarah Downey
In the eyes of her followers, Mother Maria is already a saint. But so far she’s only cleared the first hurdle: she was named a “servant of God” in 1989, after Joseph Cardinal Bernardin officially opened an archdiocesan tribunal that has since probed into every aspect of her life and legacy.
Only four people have been named saints for their work in the United States. In 1975, Elizabeth Ann Seton, founder of the Sisters of Charity, became the first American saint, 154 years after her death. Two years later sainthood came to John Neumann, the Bohemian-born bishop of Philadelphia who was instrumental in developing the diocesan school system in the U.S. Neumann died in 1860. Just a few weeks ago the pope approved a second American-born saint, banking heiress Katharine Drexel. She became a nun at age 30 and spent much of her $20 million inheritance on missionary work before her death in 1955 at the age of 96.
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Mother Frances Cabrini, the Italian founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, remains the sole saint with Chicago ties. She set a record when she was canonized in 1917, a mere 29 years after her death. While no native Chicagoans are saints, Mother Maria Kaupas and Polish-born Mother Mary Theresa Dudzik, who founded the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago, now have official cases before the Vatican. Dudzik was declared venerable several years ago, and a miracle has since been submitted for her beatification.
Andrea Ambrosi, the sister’s advocate, or “postulator,” who will formally present Mother Maria’s case, has 20 years’ experience in the field. “I wouldn’t call it pull, but the gentleman is familiar with the process,” says Sister Margaret, who scoffs at the notion that the road to sainthood resembles a political campaign. “Sixty years after her death, Mother Maria remains a woman of hope. She gives people hope when they are ready to give up.”
In the 1958 book Lily and Sword and Crown: History of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Casimir, author Katherine Burton notes that Casimira foundered a bit during her first year in the States. When she wasn’t working, Anthony took her to the opera in New York and bought her fine clothes. Still, she was listless and discontented. Then she encountered some nuns on the streets of Scranton. “She always looked at them with an odd little sense of surprise,” Burton writes, “for religious who wore their habits openly were something new to Casimira; since her childhood there had been none in her land.”
They took the name Sisters of Saint Casimir after the patron saint of Lithuania. Saint Casimir’s grandfather, Wladislaus II Jagiello, was the king of Poland who introduced Christianity to Lithuania in 1386. The prince, known for his chastity and sense of justice, earned the title of saint by defending peasants against banditry before he died of tuberculosis at age 24.
