As a teenager at the turn of the 20th century, Casimira Kaupas was smuggled out of Lithuania under a tarp and potatoes to Northeast Pennsylvania.
She spent four years in Scranton, which led her on a path to a religious life. Kaupas became Mother Maria and now, 84 years after her death in Chicago, the once curious Lithuanian teen is up for Catholic sainthood.
Sister Margaret Petcavage took over Mother Maria’s cause for sainthood 28 years ago. She's a member of the Sisters of St. Casimir congregation — the religious order Kaupas founded. St. Casimir is the patron saint of Lithuania.
The path to beatification — or sainthood — is long. There are many steps, including proving Mother Maria existed. The sisters had to exhume her body from her grave in Chicago.
Petcavage also had to put together the story of Mother Maria’s life, hoping to inspire devotion. She created a Positio for Rome. It’s a book about Kaupas and her virtues. Petcavage, a Scranton native, has also submitted three miracles to the Vatican.
The first two were denied. The third, a young girl from Kaupas' home parish surviving a near-death case of sepsis, is under review.
Petcavage never met Mother Maria, she died too young. But she knows her.
Step toward religious life
Kaupas traveled, rather escaped, to Scranton from Russian-controlled Ramygala, Lithuania, to be her brother’s housekeeper. The Rev. Anthony Kaupas was the pastor of the former St. Joseph’s Lithuanian Catholic Church on Main Avenue in North Scranton.
Three years into her stay Kaupas was traveling on the trolley in Scranton.
"And she looked out the window and she saw these women in blue with kids. And she thought, 'Well, I wonder what they're about,'” said Petcavage.
Petcavage said Kaupas questioned her brother.
“And he says, 'They are women who live for God alone, and they help children, and by teaching, by nursing and so many other occupations,'" she said. "Bingo, she knew what she wanted to do in her life.”
Back in Lithuania, her father died and left her mother alone. Kaupas, who was then in her early 20s, felt she had to go back.
During her time in Scranton, she read books in her brother's library and listened while he read what he wrote for Lithuanian newspapers and magazines. She left that behind as well as nights of chess and card games.
Kaupas always helped people, a mission she passed on to the sisters, many who serve as teachers and nurses. Petcavage said while traveling between the United States and Europe, Kaupas would help illiterate travelers write letters to their families.
Starting the sisters
With Kaupas back home, her brother had a meeting with other Lithuanian priests. The Rev. Dr. Anthony Staniukynas stood up.
"He says, 'Fathers look around what the other immigrants are doing. Mother Cabrini is in Scranton, her sisters are taking care of the Italian immigrants. The Polish have their sisters taking care of the Polish immigrants. The Irish Immaculate Heart of Mary have schools for their immigrants. We don't have that, we need that,'" Petcavage said. "And one priest hollered, ‘Casimira, Casimira!'"
Her brother wrote to her and asked if she'd be interested in starting a Lithuanian religious order for women. She replied yes.
"She felt that God wanted this for her," said Petcavage.
Kaupas once again left Lithuania. She trained in Switzerland with the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross. Other Lithuanian women joined her. Once their studies were finished they returned to the states.
They arrived in Scranton and headed to then-Marywood College. Mother Cyril Conway accepted Kaupas and her two companions into the novitiate of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM).
She made her vows in the IHM chapel and also began a lifelong friendship with Mother Cyril and a connection between the Sisters of St. Casimir and the IHM sisters.
For Kaupas' Positio, Petcavage read through letters Mother Maria and Mother Cyril wrote to each other.
"And somewhere in the midst of it, Mother Cyril says, 'I often think back to the evening, you came that Friday evening, when it was raining. And the three of you were so frightened of what was ahead for you,' and she said, 'I looked at you and you came into my heart. Because I knew God said this is what I am supposed to do, help prepare you that you may continue our work,'" Petcavage recalled while at Marywood University’s IHM Center. "That was beautiful.”
The Sisters of St. Casimir was founded on Aug. 29, 1907. Kaupas was given the name, Sister Maria, then Mother Maria while she served as general superior for 27 years. She died at 60 years old from bone cancer on April 17, 1940. Petcavage said Mother thought she had arthritis. She would often hide her hands in her religious habit to avoid shaking hands. It was painful for her.
Connected through faith & Scranton
Petcavage was in Scranton recently to celebrate her 70th jubilee as a Sister of St. Casimir. She grew up in the Tripp Park section of West Scranton and attended grade school at St. Joseph’s, the Lithuanian Catholic church that Father Kaupas helped begin. She went to high school outside of Philadelphia. Now Villa St. Joseph, Mother Maria founded the school as a retreat for the sisters.
Her degrees are from Marywood, which was founded by the IHM Sisters.
Petcavage lives outside of Chicago where the motherhouse was eventually constructed for the Sisters of St. Casimir. The midwest city has a large Lithuanian population.
Petcavage has traveled to Lithuania seven times. She's gotten to know people from Mother Maria's home parish — some who are trying to help her find a miracle.
Near the end of World War I, Lithuania became free from Czarist Russia. The country's bishops wrote to Mother Maria. They asked her to return and establish her congregation there.
She did, in an old monastery, but with regional unrest until the 90s, it fell into disarray.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lithuania was the first of the soviet republics to declare independence, said Petcavage.
Afterwards, she visited the original monastery.
“It was cold, no electricity, nothing and all this property. And a lot of the soldiers had been living there ... But the sisters weren't there, they were gone," she said.
They desired it back. So the Lithuanian sisters came to Chicago. Petcavage helped them raise money to renovate the old building.
"They went home wealthy women. I'll tell you that," she said.
Petcavage was a school principal. A monsignor promised to financially help the sisters in Lithuania out if she went and oversaw the renovations.
"I went alone ... I stayed a whole month," she said. "And we got electricity into the church.”
At the height of the religious order, the sisters were in all 50 states. They had hospitals, schools and nursing homes. The high school they ran in Chicago had a waiting list in the 1950s.
Now they are are down to 23 sisters across the world, Petcavage said. About 10 years ago they stopped accepting new sisters. Much of their property that Mother Maria helped acquire has also been sold.
"In today's society, young women are not interested in religious life, they're interested in the church, they love God. And they do see they can do ministry in other ways," said Petcavage.
Petcavage believes that Mother Maria's time in Scranton set her on the path to sainthood.
"That was her brother ... God works through people," she said.
In July 2010, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints announced that Mother Maria be named “venerable” — the title used for a person who has been posthumously declared "heroic in virtue."
She's not a saint yet. For now, the sisters wait for Rome to approve a miracle.
