Mother Jadwiga Wielhorska played an important role in the revival of the Carmelite and Discalced Carmelite monasteries in Poland at the end of the 19th century. She came from a well-known family that was politically active from the late 18th to the early 20th century. From 1851 she lived with her mother in Paris, and in 1857 she entered the Discalced Carmelite convent of Bagnères-de-Bigorre, from where she soon moved to a convent in Carcassonne because of health problems. She moved to the convent of Carcassonne, where she took her vows on 4 September 1859. Under the influence of Father Alexander Jełowiecki, a Resurrectionist, she went to the Foundation in Poznań in 1867 at the head of a group of several nuns from Liège. She worked closely with Archbishop Mieczyslaw Halka Ledóchowski. She tried in vain to open a convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns in Greater Poland.
In 1874 and 1875, the Carmelites were forced to leave Poznań due to the return of a Prussian government hostile to the Catholic Church and Poles. For a few months they lived in the Carmelite monastery in Krakow at Wesola, then they moved to their own monastery at Lobzowska Street, still in Krakow. This convent was the beginning, directly or indirectly, of all the new foundations in the Polish lands. Mother Jadwiga took an active part in the renewal of monastic life in the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites in Czerna, near Krakow. Due to internal conflicts within the congregation, she returned briefly to Carcassonne in 1879, settled in the new Discalced Carmelite convent in Wieliczka in 1880, opened thanks to the Bishop of Krakow, Albin Dunajewski, and left for Rome in 1883. There, in the medieval monastery of St Brigid, she decided to realise her idea of combining her vocation as a Discalced Carmelite with a prayer of reparation for the Church and her homeland. After the opening of two new monasteries, the contemplative and active Congregation of the Carmelites of Reparation was founded. Mother Jadwiga died on 9 January 1911.
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