Blessed Angela's life (1881-1922) is striking because of its simplicity and the felt sense of love. Some parts of her family history, though, was tough: she was the youngest child of nine brothers, often undernourished, weak and sick, she was unruly and capricious. Angela received some schooling and learned to read, but spelling was not a skill she could take pride in. Angela learned to be a pious woman and in time she was eager to read good book. By her late teenage years, she entered to the Association of Saint Zita (caring for sick people.)
Little by little she understood that her vocation was to suffer with Christ, and accept it resolutely, but conscious of its weakness. She spent many hours in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament and read books of spiritual depth, taking copious notes. By order of her confessor, Angela began to make notes of the mystical experiences. When one of the people she was looking after died, interpersonal difficulties with the deceased's family surfaced for Angela. She wrote that it feels suddenly that Jesus says to her: "Daughter, why do you worry? I have not left to you."
In order to follow more closely Christ crucified and poor, she joined the Secular Franciscan Order on March 15 1912, and is professed vows on the 6th of August of 1913. As a lay woman consecrated to Christ living under the Rule of St Francis for the Laity, Angela is an example to all of us that obstacles can be overcome with grace.
At her 1991 beatification in Kraków, Pope John Paul II said: "It is in this city that she worked, that she suffered and that her holiness came to maturity. While connected to the spirituality of St. Francis, she showed an extraordinary responsiveness to the action of the Holy Spirit" (L'Osservatore Romano, 34.4, 1991).
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