Marcelina Darowska

Marcelina Darowska, (January 16, 1827 - January 5, 1911), was a Polish nun who was beatified by then Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square in Rome in 1996. She was inspired by the Virgin Mary to co-found the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an active religious order in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. Childhood and marriage

Marcelina (or Marcellina) Kotowicz was born in Szulaki, a part of Poland that was controlled by the Russians at the time of the Tsar. His parents, Jan and Maksymilia Kotowicz, were wealthy landowners. He went to school in Odessa for three years, before working on his father's farm.

Some sources claim that she was deeply religious, even from a young age. Before the death of his father, he made the promise to marry and start a family. And on October 2, 1849 he married Karol Darowski, a landowner from Podolia. He died of typhus three years later, leaving his two children - Jozef and Karolina. One year after that, his son died. This series of tragedies influenced her religious thoughts and led her to change her life.

For reasons of health, I traveled to Berlin, then to Paris, and finally to Rome, arriving in the Italian city on April 11, 1853.

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