Sr. Mary Canisia (Eugenia Mackiewicz)

She was born on September 27, 1903 in Suwałki then under Russian rule. Her father was an officer in the Russian army. Eugenia came from a family of many children with longstanding religious traditions. She had four brothers and sisters. One of her brothers was an army priest, chaplain, and catechist. In 1913 she began attending a Russian public middle school in Suwałki. Due to the outbreak of World War I she left Suwałki twice. She also attended first, second and third years of middle school in Mohylew on the Dnieper River. After the death of her mother in 1918 she returned to Poland with her family, continuing her studies in a Polish public middle school in Suwałki until the school year of 1921/1922. After completing middle school she wanted to enter the Congregation but changed her mind out of consideration for her father. Then she continued her education at a teachers’ training college in Suwałki. After completing that program she worked as a teacher. Between the 1929/1930 and 1932/1933 school years she worked in Szczytniki (near Brześć on the River Bug) living with her father and brother. After the death of her brother she asked to be accepted to the Congregation. She was a postulant in Warsaw, then left for six months to Ostrzeszów, and later to Vilnius where she stayed until the end of the school year. She completed her novitiate in Albano (near Rome) and after making her first vows she returned to Poland in July 1936 where she became a teacher first in the school in Kalisz and from September 1938, in Nowogrodek. During the Soviet occupation she continued to work as a teacher albeit in secular attire. Nonetheless, after some time the Russians discovered that Eugenia Mackiewicz was a sister. Because of then-impending repressions she left for the convent in Grodno, where she hid away under another name. She returned to Nowogrodek only after the invasion of the German occupying forces. During the occupation just as before the war she prepared children for the Holy Communion. She also taught Polish, history, and mathematics in secret classes. Sister Canisia was righteous, open, and unusually conscientious. By nature of a lively temperament she worked hard to manage her impetuosity and she did have some serious health problems.