Soon to be blessed (April 28 in Poland) HANNA HELENA CHRZANOWSKA was a Polish Roman Catholic Benedictine oblate who served as a nurse. She worked in her profession during World War II when the Nazi regime targeted Poles, tending to the wounded and the ailing throughout the conflict. She was awarded two prestigious Polish awards for her good works. Her cause of sainthood began a decade after her death in 1973. Pope Francis declared her to be Venerable in 2015 upon the confirmation of her heroic virtue. She will be beatified on 28 April 2018 in Poland
Hanna was born in 1902 in Warsaw. She was part of an industrialist (maternal side) and a land-owning household (paternal side) that maintained a long-standing tradition of charitable works. Her parents were well known for this in their native Poland Warsaw
She was a relative of the Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz (on her father's side) who was best known for writing the novel Quo Vadis.
Since childhood she suffered from respiratory and immune system deficiencies and spent a great deal of time in hospitals and sanatoriums in order to recover from illness. In 1910 the family relocated from Warsaw
Hanna was curious and exuberant, attending an Ursuline high school and graduating with honors. During the Bolshevik Revolution she tended to the wounded soldiers and later began studies at the School of Nursing in Warsaw
She also traveled to Belgium to observe the nursing profession there as part of her education in order to gain greater experience and broader knowledge of the field. During her time as a nurse she became a leading light in the field in her region and a well known face in her local area due to her temperance and her good works among the people whom she was dedicated to serving.
Hanna became an instructor at the University School of Nurses and Hygienists in Krakow from 1926 until 1929 and also served as the editor of the monthly publication "Nurse Poland
Drawn to St Benedictand aspiring to follow his example and the message of the Gospel in an effort to draw closer to God she became an Oblate, with the desire to fuse her faith with her work as merciful and charitable.
In 1940 during World War II she lost her father who died during the Sonderaktion Krakau at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and her lieutenant brother Bogden died at the hands of Soviet soldiers on the orders of Joseph Stalin in the Katyn massacre. As the war continued she organized nurses for home care in Warsaw School of Psychiatric Nursing
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In 1966 she was diagnosed with cancer and despite several operations the disease spread. On 12 April 1973 she received the Sacrament of the Sick and the next day lost consciousness, dying a day later. Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow Karol Józef Wojtyła ( the future St.Pope John Paul II) celebrated her funeral.