Zofia Czeska-Maciejowska was born in the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1584 as one of nine children to Mateusz Maciejowska and Katarzyna Lubowiecka; one sister younger than her was Anna. Czeska married in 1600 to Jan Czeska and was widowed in 1626 childless at which point her religious calling flourished. Czeska organised a
school for girls in
Kraków from 1621 until 1627 (at 18 Szpitalna Street) and then decided to found a women's
religious institute that she titled the Sisters of the Presentation which she set up on 31 May 1627. Thus the institution that she had introduced was dedicated to the care and the education of poor and orphaned girls which she threw herself into with much apostolic vigor. In 1602 she joined a religious movement that the
Jesuit priest
Piotr Skarga founded. Once she returned home after
Mass and a man kidnapped her demanding the two be married; she refused and the man married her little sister Anna. Czeska died on 1 April 1650 and her remains were interred in the
basilica. Her order continues to operate in both her native
Poland and in
Ukraine. In 2008 there were 126 religious in 18 houses and the order was aggregated to the
Order of Friars Minor on 19 April 1938. ==Beatification==