The Mother Maria Kaupas Center in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, seeks to honor within Divine Redeemer Parish and the Diocese of Harrisburg the life and work of the Venerable Mother Maria Kaupas, foundress of the Sisters of Saint Casimir. It is a ministry within Divine Redeemer Parish – a center for volunteerism and community service, and a place where spirituality, community, and leadership merge.
Mother Maria Kaupas lived and worked in Mount Carmel, responding to the needs of God’s people. We desire to continue her legacy by doing the same.
The Life of Mother Maria Kaupas
In 1897, seventeen-year-old Casimira Kaupas journeyed from her native Lithuania to Scranton, Pennsylvania as a companion and housekeeper for her brother Anthony who was a priest serving the needs of Lithuanian immigrants. In America, Casimira saw religious Sisters for the first time and was drawn to their life of prayer and service to God’s people. After four years, she returned to Lithuania but with a few questions about her future. What should she do with her life? After only a few months, she realized that she had a calling to religious life, and she wrote to her brother that she would return to America and enter a community of Sisters. Her brother responded that the Priests’ League in Pennsylvania wanted her to establish a new religious congregation to teach children in the schools they would build. Casimira readily agreed.
Casimira went first to Ingenbohl, Switzerland for education and religious training. During her time there, she was notified that the Priests’ League had failed to find sufficient resources for the future Congregation and were abandoning the idea. Casimira, however, did not give up. She wrote to her brother and asked him to find a bishop who would sponsor the Congregation and a priest to serve as a spiritual guide, and she set sail for America with two companions – Judith Dvaranauskas and Antoinette Unguraitis.
The new Congregation’s mission of education began at the Holy Cross School in Mount Carmel, which opened on January 6, 1908. In 1964, the Holy Cross School was consolidated with five other parish schools to form the Holy Spirit School. The Sisters of St. Casimir continued to staff the school until 1973. In 1995, Holy Cross Parish merged with four other ethnic parishes in Mount Carmel to form Divine Redeemer Parish.
The Sisters of Saint Casimir chose Chicago, with its large Lithuanian population, as the site for their Motherhouse. As the numbers continued to grow, they responded to requests for Sisters from parishes throughout the United States, and they moved to Chicago in 1911. As a response to the influenza epidemic in 1918, Mother Maria began preparing Sisters for the ministry of health care in addition to education.
After 33 years of serving God’s people and watching her Congregation grow, Mother Maria Kaupas died on April 17, 1940. Since that time, her life has been carefully studied through witnesses interviews and depositions. In 1986, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome declared Mother Maria “Servant of God,” and on July 1, 2010, she was declared “Venerable,” which is one step closer to being named “Blessed” and ultimately “Saint.”
A Short Video on Her Life
“always more, always better, always with love.”
Mother Maria Kaupas
Mother Maria Kaupas Center 