Hanna Helena Chrzanowska
| Venerable Hanna Helena Chrzanowska O.S.B. | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Laywoman | |
| Born |
7 October 1902 Warsaw, Vistula Land |
| Died |
29 April 1973 (aged 70) Krakow, Poland |
| Resting place | Rakowicki Cemetery, Poland |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
Hanna Helena Chrzanowska (7 October 1902 - 29 April 1973) was a Polish Roman Catholic who served as a nurse and was also a member of the Benedictine oblates. Chrzanowska worked in her profession during World War II when Poles were targeted by the Nazis but she tended to the wounded and the ailing throughout the conflict and sought to minimalize suffering in her own parish.
After less than a decade of battling cancer she succumbed to the disease in 1973.
Her cause of sainthood has commenced and she was granted the title of Servant of God on 28 April 1997. Pope Francis declared her to be Venerable on 30 September 2015.[1]
Life
Hanna Helena Chrzanowska was born on 7 October 1902 in Warsaw to Ignacy Chrzanowska (1866-1940) and Wanda Szlenkier; her brother was Bogden Chrzanowska. She was part of an industrialist (maternal side) and a land-owning family (paternal side) that maintained a long-standing tradition of charitable works; her family was well known for this in native Poland. The family was also half Roman Catholic and half Protestant (descended from the Jauch family).
Chrzanowska attended an Ursuline high school in her adolescence. During the Bolshevik Revolution she tended to the wounded soldiers and later commenced her studies at the School of Nursing in Warsaw in 1920. She gained a scholarship to a nursing school in France in 1925 while later going on to work with the members of the U.S. Red Cross as a nurse in a time when the profession was not so well respected.[1] She also travelled to Belgium to observe the nursing profession there as part of her education. During her time as a nurse she became a leading light in the field in her region and became a well known face in her local area due to her temperance and her good works. She became an instructor at the University School of Nurses and Hygienists in Krakow from 1926 until 1929 and also served as the editor of the monthly publication "Nurse Poland" from 1929 to 1939. She also worked to help form the Catholic Association of Polish Nurses in 1937.
She became a member of the Benedictine oblate due to being drawn to Saint Benedict of Nursia and aspiring to follow his example and the message of the Gospel in an effort to draw closer to God; she also wanted to fuse her faith with her work as merciful and charitable work.[1]
In 1940 during World War II she lost her father who died during the Sonderaktion Krakau at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and her lieutenant brother Bogden died at the hands of Soviet soldiers on the orders of Joseph Stalin in the Katyn massacre. As the war continued she organized nurses for home care in Warsaw and helped to both feed and resettle refugees. At the conclusion of the war she became the head of a nursing home where she attended to administrative duties and cared for residents while working with nursing students. Chrzanowska also served as the director of the School of Psychiatric Nursing in Kobierzyn until the Communists closed it. After sometime she moved into nursing the poor and the neglected in her own parish area.[1] She attained a scholarship to the United States of America from 1946 until 1947.
In 1966 she was diagnosed with cancer and despite several operations the disease spread. She succumbed to the disease on 29 April 1973. The Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow Karol Józef Wojtyła - the future Pope John Paul II - celebrated her funeral.
Honors
Chrzanowska received two honors in her lifetime:
- the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice medal
- the Order of Polonia Restituta (Knight's Cross)
Beatification process
The beatification process commenced in Poland on 28 April 1997 when the Congregation for the Causes of Saints granted their assent to the cause. The diocesan process spanned from 3 November 1998 until 2003 and it saw the accumulation of documents and witness testimonies in order to collate work on her life and her exercise of the virtues.
The Positio was presented to Rome for further evaluation in 2011 and Pope Francis recognized that she had lived a life of heroic virtue thus proclaimed her to be Venerable on 30 September 2015.
The next step is for a miracle to be attributed to her for her beatification. One such case was investigated and was validated in Rome in 2010.
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Venerable Hanna Helena Chrzanowska". Saints SQPN. 3 October 2015. Retrieved 27 December 2015.