Maria Therese von Wüllenweber

The turning point of her life occurred in 1882. On April 25, Therese responded to a press advertisement published by Father Bonaventura Lüthen for the Apostolic Teaching Society, recently founded in Rome by Father Francis Mary of the Cross (Johann Baptist Jordan). Father Jordan visited her in Neuwerk on July 4, 1882. Captivated by his apostolic zeal, she joined the Society on September 5, 1882, becoming its first female member.

On December 8, 1888, in Tivoli, near Rome, she officially co-founded with Father Jordan the female branch of the work: the Congregation of the Sisters of the Divine Savior (also called Salvatorian Sisters). She then took the religious name Mother Mary of the Apostles. She was appointed superior of this new community, which developed in great material poverty.

Under her leadership, the institute quickly took on an international missionary dimension. As early as December 1890, she sent the first three sisters on a mission to Assam, in northeastern India. In 1894, following a typhus epidemic in Tivoli that claimed the lives of seven nuns, the motherhouse was transferred to Rome. During the first general chapter of the congregation in 1905, Mother Mary of the Apostles was unanimously elected superior general. She led the institute until her death, which occurred in Rome on December 25, 1907, during Christmas night.

The reputation for holiness of Mother Mary of the Apostles led to the opening of her cause for beatification in Rome in 1943. The diocesan informative process took place from 1943 to 1949. Her spiritual writings were officially approved by Vatican theologians on December 23, 1952. Pope Paul VI promulgated the decree recognizing the heroic nature of her virtues on July 15, 1965, conferring upon her the title of Venerable.

For her beatification, two miracles obtained through her intercession were formally recognized by the Holy See in 1965. The first concerns the unexplained healing of a man suffering from a pulmonary embolism at the Salvator Mundi Hospital in Rome, after the blessed appeared to him in a dream. The second is the healing of a woman suffering from a fatal skin disease at St. Mary's Nursing Home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (United States).

Mother Mary of the Apostles was solemnly beatified on October 13, 1968, by Pope Paul VI in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. During the ceremony, the Sovereign Pontiff highlighted the perfect harmony between her spirit of apostolate and her missionary service. Her relics are today preserved and venerated in a dedicated chapel within the Generalate of the Salvatorian Sisters in Rome.

The spirituality of Blessed Mary of the Apostles rests on an absolute trust in Divine Providence and a universal missionary zeal. In close union with the vision of the co-founder, Blessed Francis Mary of the Cross Jordan, she wished for Christ the Savior to be known and loved by all, by all the means that love inspires. Her legacy is perpetuated through the Congregation of the Sisters of the Divine Savior, who work today in nearly 30 countries on five continents, particularly among the poor, women, and children, through education, healthcare, and social pastoral work.