Ursula Ledóchowska

Ursula Ledóchowska (1865 to 1939), baptised Julia Maria and known in religion as Maria Ursula of Jesus, was a Polish Catholic religious sister who founded the Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus. Born into a noble family in Loosdorf, she entered the Ursuline novitiate in Kraków in 1886 and later led the convent there. In St. Petersburg she built up a residence for Polish children and adolescents at a time when Catholic institutions were illegal in the Russian Empire. After her expulsion in 1914 she worked in Sweden and Denmark, where she started a language school, a domestic science school for girls, an orphanage and a school of home economics in Aalborg. In 1920 she returned to Poland and formed her congregation at Pniewy, later directing it from Rome. She was beatified in 1983 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2003, and the atlas records her as an institutional founder through her convents, schools and student residences.