WULLENWEBER, MARIA THERESIA von. - In religion Maria degli Apostoli, co-foundress of the Sisters of the Divine Saviour, born at Myllendonk Castle on 19 February 1833, died in Rome on 25 December 1907.
Having heard a sermon on the apostolate and missions, she felt deeply that this must be her path and sought it at once, though in vain, among the Religious of the Sacred Heart, the Visitandines, the Sacramentines of Belgium, and in an attempt to form a new Congregation of missionary Sisters. Finally, having received a leaflet published by the founder of the young “Catholic Educational Society” (later [1893] the Society of the Divine Saviour), Fr. Francesco Jordan, she felt impelled to communicate with him and to join him in Rome, in order to study there the women’s institution to be incorporated into the Salvatorian family. The new community, which had a missionary programme but above all and fundamentally a catechetical one, had its cradle at Tivoli in 1888 and soon moved to Rome, which promptly became, as it were, the bridgehead from which it launched out in every direction: Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Assam, the United States, etc. The inevitable difficulties and continual trials only strengthened in the foundress the fortitude with which she faced them, in order to distribute every possible good among souls through the care of the sick in their homes and in its own hospitals, in schools of every kind, and in charitable works.