Maria Katharina Kasper

From the mid-1840s, Katharina Kasper gathered young companions to alleviate the miseries of her time. On August 15, 1848, the feast of the Assumption, with the consent of the Bishop of Limburg and the support of her parishioners, she opened a house welcoming the poor of the village; thinking of Mary, servant of the Lord, she wished for her companions to be called Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ (in German, Arme Dienstmägde Jesu Christi). The congregation was canonically erected on August 15, 1851, when Kasper and several young women pronounced their vows before Bishop Peter Joseph Blum; she then took the name Sister Maria. The institute, which adopted a rule inspired by Saint Vincent de Paul, dedicated itself to the care of the sick at home, the education of poor children, and the reception of orphans and the elderly. Elected Superior General five times, the foundress saw her work spread to the Netherlands as early as 1859, then to the United States starting in 1868, as well as to England. Despite the hostility of the Kulturkampf, the congregation numbered several hundred sisters at the death of its foundress and several thousand at the beginning of the 20th century.

The spirituality of Maria Katharina Kasper is characterized by great simplicity and a constant abandonment to the divine will. She loved to repeat that "the holy will of God must be accomplished in me, through me, and for me," making this docility the heart of her interior life. Remaining close to her peasant origins, she shared the humblest tasks alongside her religious sisters, cultivating an ideal of personal poverty and concrete charity toward the most destitute. She wanted "hidden saints," uniting the contemplative recollection of Mary with the activity of Martha in service to one's neighbor. During the beatification in 1978, Pope Paul VI summarized this spiritual physiognomy by designating as marks of her ministry and her holiness "personal poverty and love for the poor, simplicity and humility, and the gift of self in service to men according to the will of God." Her reputation for holiness, already vivid during her lifetime, did not cease to grow within her congregation after her death, justifying the opening of her cause.

Maria Katharina Kasper was beatified on April 16, 1978, in Saint Peter's Square, by Pope Paul VI; the miracle accepted for this beatification was the healing, in 1945, of a religious sister of the congregation, Sister Maria Herluka, who was suffering from a severe form of tuberculosis. Her liturgical feast is set for February 2, the day of her death. The canonization took place forty years later, on October 14, 2018, in Saint Peter's Square, when Pope Francis inscribed her in the catalogue of saints during a celebration held during the Synod of Bishops on Youth; she was canonized alongside Pope Paul VI, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and other blesseds. The miracle recognized for the canonization, approved by decree on March 6, 2018, concerns the unexplained healing of an Indian religious, who was seriously injured following an accident in the state of Madhya Pradesh at the end of 2011, and who recovered his health without surgical intervention. In his homily, Pope Francis presented these new saints as witnesses who lived the Gospel "without lukewarmness, without calculation, with the passion to risk everything and leave everything behind."

The heritage of Maria Katharina Kasper is perpetuated above all in the congregation of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, whose motherhouse remains in Dernbach. Established during her lifetime in the Netherlands, the United States, and England, the institute subsequently expanded to other countries, and its sisters are today present on several continents, notably in Europe, America, and India, where they continue their apostolate among the poor, the sick, the elderly, and children, in the hospital, educational, and social fields. The figure of the founder, a simple woman of the people who became the mother of a vast religious family, has remained a model of humble and persevering service. Her canonization in 2018 renewed attention to her spirituality of abandonment to the will of God and charity toward the least among us, making her one of the German saints most recently honored by the universal Church.