Kunegunda Siwiec

Kunegunda became actively involved in the local apostolate. She joined the Apostleship of Prayer to the Sacred Heart and became a zealot of the Living Rosary. In 1902, she completed a catechist training course organized by the "Sidziniarki" (a group of laywomen dedicated to parish catechesis founded by Father Wojciech Blaszyński). From then on, she dedicated herself to teaching the faith and preparing children and adults for the sacraments of confession, communion, and marriage. She also provided spiritual and financial support for the priestly vocation of Józef Czernecki, the son of the parish organist, who was ordained a priest in 1922. In 1923 (or 1924, after the death of her parents), she was admitted into the Third Order of the Discalced Carmelites (today the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites, OCDS) in Wadowice, taking the religious name Teresa of the Child Jesus (Teresa od Dzieciątka Jezus). In 1928-1929, she donated a plot of land she had inherited to the Congregation of the Sisters of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ to establish a pedagogical and educational center (including a school and an orphanage) as well as a chapel dedicated to Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus.

During the Second World War, in 1942, faced with the threat of the pacification of her village of Siwcówka and the deportation of its inhabitants to the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Nazi occupation forces, Kunegunda offered her life to God for the salvation of her community. Her prayer was answered: the village was spared and none of its inhabitants perished. In 1942, Father Bronisław Bartkowski, chaplain of the Sisters of the Resurrection, also became her confessor and spiritual director. Kunegunda began to receive interior locutions and mystical graces, conversing spiritually with Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and various saints. At the urging of her spiritual director, these supernatural communications (known as "Nadprzyrodzone oświecenia" or Supernatural Enlightenments) were faithfully recorded in writing by Father Bartkowski for thirteen years, until 1955. In 1946, she participated in spiritual exercises preached by Bishop Stefan Wyszyński (then Bishop of Lublin, future Cardinal and Blessed), who would regularly visit the center in Siwcówka and go to her bedside on several occasions.

From the autumn of 1948, Kunegunda was afflicted with an incurable bone tuberculosis that confined her permanently to her bed for the last seven years of her life. She also lost the use of her right eye. Despite her intense suffering and immobility, she continued to welcome, advise, and catechize the many visitors drawn by her gentleness and spiritual wisdom. She passed away in the odor of sanctity on June 27, 1955, in Stryszawa - Siwcówka, on the feast day of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Her mortal remains now rest in a sarcophagus within the chapel of the Sisters of the Resurrection in Siwcówka. Her beatification process opened at the diocesan level on December 21, 2007, in the Archdiocese of Krakow and concluded on October 28, 2011. The validity of the diocesan inquiry was recognized by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on March 1, 2013. On February 24, 2025, during an audience granted to Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, Pope Francis authorized the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to promulgate the decree recognizing the heroic nature of her virtues, thereby conferring upon her the title of Venerable.

The spirituality of Kunegunda Siwiec is deeply rooted in the Carmelite school, and more particularly in the "little way" of spiritual childhood of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, whose name she bore in religion. Her life bears witness to a simple faith, total humility, and a joyful acceptance of suffering, offered in union with the Passion of Christ for the salvation of souls.

Her spiritual legacy is today perpetuated by the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites and by the Association of Friends of Kunegunda Siwiec (Diakonia Przyjaciół Kunegundy Siwiec). The center of Siwcówka remains a place of pilgrimage and recollection, marked by the memory of this humble mystic of the Polish mountains.