Felician Sisters

This religious institute was founded in Warsaw, Poland, in 1855, by Angela Truszkowska, and named for a shrine of Saint Felix of Cantalice, a 16th-century Capuchin especially devoted to children.

On the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, November 21, 1855, while praying before an icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa, Angela Truszkowska and her cousins dedicated themselves to do the will of Jesus Christ in all things.

She spent the next thirty years on assignments in the garden and greenhouse, tending flowers for the chapel and in the liturgical vestment sewing room, embroidering altar cloths and chasubles.

Most Felician sisters maintain the religious habit of their foundress, Blessed Mary Angela Truszkowska, consisting of a brown tunic (beige during summer months), scapular, headdress, black veil, collar, Felician wooden crucifix suspended on tape or cord, and simple ring received at the perpetual vows.

[6] They remain active in education, operating, among other facilities, the St. Mary Child Care Center in Livonia, Michigan; Immaculate Conception High School, founded in 1915 in Lodi, New Jersey; and Villa Maria College in Buffalo, New York.

[7] Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan was originally founded as the "Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Junior College" in 1937.

[11] As part of the Catholic Volunteer Network, the North American Province has a Felician Volunteers in Mission (VIM) program which offers both short and long-term service opportunities to lay men and women interested in partnering with the Felician Sisters to serve, with compassion, mercy and joy, the disadvantaged and underserved.