Josaphata Hordashevska

Josaphata (née Michaelina Hordashevska; Ukrainian: Михайлина Гордашевська; 20 November 1869 – 7 April 1919) was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic religious sister in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was the first member and co-founder of the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate.

Biography Michaelina Hordashevska was born on 20 November 1869 in Lviv, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now Ukraine, into a family who were members of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. At 18, she considered consecrating her life to God in a contemplative monastery of the Basilian nuns, then the only Eastern-rite women's religious congregation. She attended a spiritual retreat preached by a Basilian monk, Jeremiah Lomnytskyj, whose spiritual guidance she sought. Hordashevska took a private vow of chastity for one year with his permission. She was to renew this vow twice.

At that time, Lomnytsky, seeing that there was a need for active religious sisters to meet the social needs of the poor and needy faithful of the church, had decided to establish a women's congregation which would follow an active life of service. He did so with Cyril Sielecki, pastor of the village of Zhuzhelyany. Lomnytsky felt that Hordashevska would be an appropriate candidate to found such a congregation. Thus, she was asked to be the foundress of such a group, rather than follow the monastic life she had been considering. When she agreed, she was sent in June 1892 to the Polish Roman Catholic Felician Sisters to experience the life of community, which followed an active consecrated life.

By 1902, the congregation numbered 128 sisters in 26 convents across the country. They held their first General Chapter in August of that year, at which Hordashevska was elected the first superior general of the congregation and Lomnytsky resigned from that office. Soon, however, internal divisions led Hordashevska to tender her resignation to the Metropolitan Archbishop of Lviv, Andrey Sheptytsky. Under the new superior general appointed by the Metropolitan Archbishop, Hordashevska and her natural sister, Arsenia Hordashevska, were denied permission to take permanent vows.

Relics In November 1982, Hordashevska's remains were exhumed and taken to Rome, where they are kept in a reliquary in the general motherhouse of the Congregation of the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate in Rome. Small parts of the relics remain in various places around Ukraine, including a monastery in Lviv, located on Pasichna Street.

Beatification On 27 June 2001, she was proclaimed Blessed by Pope John Paul II in Lviv, in a beatification ceremony during the Holy Liturgy in the Byzantine rite.