Feliksa Kozłowska
| Maria Franciszka Kozłowska | |
|---|---|
| Mateczka | |
 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Birth name | Feliksa Magdalena Kozłowska |
| Born |
May 27, 1862 Wieliczna, Congress Poland |
| Died | August 23, 1921 (aged 59) Płock, Second Polish Republic |
| Buried |
Temple of Mercy and Charity, Płock, Poland 52°32′53″N 19°40′48″E / 52.548°N 19.680°E |
| Sainthood | |
| Venerated in |
Catholic Mariavite Church Old Catholic Mariavite Church |
| Title as Saint | Mateczka (Little Mother) |
| Patronage | Mariavitism |
| Shrines | Temple of Mercy and Charity |
Feliksa Magdalena Kozłowska (27 May 1862 – 23 August 1921), known by the religious name Maria Franciszka and the epithet Mateczka, was a Polish Christian mystic and visionary who founded what eventually became the Old Catholic Mariavite Church and the Catholic Mariavite Church, a faction that was excluded from it in 1935. Both denominations are a schism from the Catholic Church and declared heretical by the Catholic Church.
Kozłowska was born 27 May 1862 in Wieliczna near Wegrow. She was eight months old when her father died and was raised by her mother. They lived with relatives first in Pulaski in Czerwonka węgrowski, and later in Baczkach. She graduated from a high school in Warsaw. She planned to join the convent of the Visitation in Warsaw, but as a result of the tsarist regulations with respect to the orders, it proved impossible. After a retreat in 1883 she entered the Congregation of the Franciscan Suffering founded by Honorat Kozminski. Its purpose was to care for the sick.
In 1887 she and five other women entered into communal living in the town of Plock. They followed a Franciscan spirituality. They supported themselves doing embroidery, and followed a relatively strict regimen, abstaining from all meat and fish.
Beginning in 1893, Kozłowska claimed that she experienced religious visions. The first vision allegedly instructed her to form a new clerical order with the primary goal of propagating the Adoration of the Holy Sacrament and devotion to the Mother of God of the Eternal Help. They became known as "Mariavites", as they allegedly took their inspiration for this effort at greater sanctity from imitation of the life of Mary. This group continued for ten years, and in 1903, it attempted to gain canonical status within the Catholic Church. Father Jan Maria Michał Kowalski led this effort. Kozłowska, not wishing to break with the Vatican or to seem in any way to foster heresy, largely stayed out of public view and left the political implications of the movement to others, particularly to Kowalski.
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Wikipedia