St Mary Angela

Mary Angela was named Sophia Camille when she was born. Her parents were important people in Poland and they were good Catholics.  Sophia was a very smart girl, but she was always sick and so she couldn’t go to school for very long.  Instead, she learned at home through reading her father’s books and being taught by her father who was a lawyer.  This is how she learned to care about those in her community who were not well-off like her family and who suffered because of the way they were treated.  Sophia loved to pray and she wanted to become a cloistered nun when she grew up, to spend all of her time in prayer with Jesus.  She was told that she should stay to help her father instead and so she continued to pray and to work to help those in need.  She realized that many of the problems in her community came from families who were having a hard time and so she decided to help the kids from these families learn about Jesus and get a good education.  A friend, Clothilde, joined her and together they dedicated themselves to Mary to whatever her Son Jesus asked them to do.  They formed a group of sisters called the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Felix, and Sophia took the name Mary Angela.  They worked hard helping all the people in their community, but they also took lots of time to pray and get to know Jesus better.  Many women joined Mary Angela and Clothilde and they did whatever the Church asked them to do: teaching, helping the sick, and helping children, adults and the elderly. Mary Angela became sick after many years of service and she suffered a lot, for many years.  During this time she grew even closer to Jesus, showing the sisters in her congregation how to love and serve God above everything else, even when it was hard.