Beatification process underway for co-foundress of Pink Sisters

On Feb. 25, the Holy See gave approval for the beatification process to begin for Mother Mary Michael, SSpSAP co-foundress and first superior general of the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters, also known as the Pink Sisters. The subsequent Nihil Obstat–a declaration of no objection–signed by Cardinal Angelus Amato on March 19 opened the way for the beginning of the beatification process.
 
The beatification process began at the diocesan level on Aug. 26, 2014, on the occasion of the centenary celebration of the motherhouse of the Sisters in Steyl in the Netherlands. The request, together with all the necessary documents regarding the opening of the process, was presented to the Bishop Frans Wiertz of the Diocese of Roermond.
 
Mother Mary Michael, born Adolfine Tönnies on Jan. 7, 1862 in Horst-Emscher (today Gelsenkirchen-Horst), completed her schooling and subsequent teacher training in Muenster. She worked for 10 years as a teacher in the North German town of Rendsburg. With her desire to become a religious, she applied to the German priest St. Arnold Janssen, who in 1875 founded a house for the training of future missionaries in Steyl.
 
In 1891, Father Janssen accepted Adolfine Tönnies in the Congregation of Missionary Sisters, which he had founded two years previously.  When in 1896 he founded a second, contemplative congregation, Adolfine Tönnies belonged to the founding sisters of this community of the Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration. She became their superior and later their superior general.

Mother Mary once said, "Love lives by sacrifice and those sisters who gladly make sacrifices are the ones who will attain perfection."

"This is the way in which she taught, quite motherly and speaking from her own spiritual experience. We would say to the readers of your article that we feel for certain that Mother Mary Michael is 'Up there listening!' And she will be showing to you, as she did to our Congregation, the way to Jesus, truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament Exposed from whom she will draw the graces for you," said one of her spiritual daughters in Corpus Christi.
 
As a sister, she received the religious name Mary Michael. Although she lived in an enclosed cloister, she was with all her heart a missionary as well. She worked for the inner and outer development of her congregation and founded new adoration convents in Germany, the Netherlands, the U.S., the Philippines and China. She died on Feb. 25, 1934, in Steyl.
 
Today there are about 350 Steyl Adoration Sisters living in 22 convents in various parts of the world, including eight in Corpus Christi where they offer perpetual adoration at the Blessed Sacrament Chapel on Ocean Drive.