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Blessed Josaphata Mykhailyna Hordashevska

Blessed Josaphata Mykhailyna Hordashevska Also known as

Giosafata Hordaševska
Michalina Jozafata Hordaszewska
Mykhailyna Hordashevska
Yosafata Hordashevska

25 March

Profile

Greek Catholic. Entered the contemplative Basilian Sisters at age 18. When the Basilians decided to establish a woman‘s congregation that focused on the active life, sister Mykhailyna was chosed to lead it. First member of the Sisters Servant of Mary Immaculate, taking the name Josaphata, from Saint Josaphat.

The Sister Servants “serve Your people where the need is greatest”, teaching and caring for the sick. Josaphata founded day care centers so parents could work the fields, studied herbal medicines and compounded home-made remedies for people who could not afford physicians, and read the lives of the saints to the illiterate. She and the Sisters worked in areas of typhus and cholera epidemics, helped restore churches, and taught people to make liturgical vestments.

Because many men and women of the day could not deal with a woman as governor of a congregation, she met great opposition from laity and clergy. Lies were told about her, and her fatal disease of incredibly painful, but she confronted all it with prayer, and today the Sisters have houses in Ukraine, Canada and Brazil.

Born

20 November 1869 at Lviv, Ukraine as Mykhailyna Hordashevska

Died

7 April 1919 of tuberculosis of the bone in Krystynopil, Ukraine
buried at Krystynopil
remains transferred to a chapel at the Generalate of the Sisters Servants in Rome in November 1982

Venerable

6 April 1998 by Pope John Paul II (decree of heroic virtues)

Beatified

27 June 2001 by Pope John Paul II at Ukraine

Prayers

Lord God, we praise you and we thank you for having called your servant Josaphata Hordashevska to the work of evangelization and education of youth. She was the first to respond to the charism of the Servants of Mary Immaculate, and throughout her virtuous life was an apostle among her Ukrainian people through her evangelical witness and her sanctity. Lord God, for your greater glory, and the spiritual good of souls, glorify your faithful servant, Sister Josaphata. Grant us the grace for which we so ardently pray through her intercession. Amen.

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