Bl. Boleslava Lament

Blessed Boleslava Lament, founder of the Congregation of Missionary Sisters of the Holy Family, was known for her love for the Eucharist and the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, as well as her apostolic and ecumenical zeal.

Blessed Lament worked as a seamstress and soon joined a religious order though left just prior to her profession upon experiencing vocational doubts; she returned to her life as a seamstress and worked with two of her sisters to support their siblings and widowed mother. The death of her seminarian brother prompted her to return to religious life – the Blessed Honorat Koźmiński encouraged this return – and she later founded an order that soon spread and took her to Russia though its revolution forced her departure during World War I.

In St. Petersburg she played an intense catechetical, educational and welfare in poorer neighborhoods, striving to create the conditions for a genuine social and ecumenism, to deepen mutual understanding and goodwill between the students and their families, who were different nationalities and religions.

In this context of ecumenism, she took to thinking of setting up a branch in the Congregation of Sisters of separate Eastern rite. The life of her institution was not easy, she had to overcome the obstruction of Tsarist religious policy, then to those resulting from the First World War and persecution of the Bolsheviks, who seized power in Russia, with the ‘Revolution’ s October “of 1917, so in 1921 she was forced to leave Russia and return to Poland with the intention to resume activities at St. Petersburg, when circumstances would permit.

The last five years of her life, she spent being paralyzed, but also patient and prayerful. During her whole life, Blessed Boleslava was extremely compassionate toward poor people. She was moved by the fate of those discriminated by society, addicts, and even criminals. She worked toward the unity of the church especially in places where the division was extremely visible.

The Congregation of the “Sisters of the Holy Family”, is widely popular in Poland, Russia, Zambia, Libya, USA and Rome.She died in Bialystok, Poland, in 1946 and was beatified in 1991.

Bl. Boleslava Lament, pray for us.