The INSTITUTE of BENEDICTINE NUNS OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION was created in France in the seventeenth century in the heart of the monastic family of Saint Benedict, as a contemplative, cloistered branch, devoted to adoration and reparation.
The FOUNDER, Mother Mechtilde of the Holy Sacrament (Catherine de Bar), prioress of the Benedictine convent in Lorraine – an exceptional figure of the 17th century religious revival in France – became overwhelmed by the insults that were committed against the Most Holy Sacrament. She felt driven by God to establish a monastery that would be in a special way devoted to adoration and reparation by the nuns. Her inspiration fit with the desires of Queen Anna of Austria, who helped Mother Mechtilde create in 1653 a small Benedictine monastery in Paris dedicated to the perpetual adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament. It was the first monastery of the Institute.
IN POLAND, THE FIRST CONVENT of Benedictine of the Most Blessed Sacrament was founded in Warsaw in 1688 by Queen Maria Kazimiera in recognition of the victory of Polish King Jan III Sobieski over the Turks near Vienna (1683). The Warsaw convent is one of ten established during the lifetime of Mother Mechtilde. She sent nuns from France to this convent in Warsaw, which is the oldest site in Poland of perpetual adoration, lasted every day and night for over three hundred years, thus fulfilling its mission in the Church and the homeland. Only once in its history was the mission interrupted for a short time. It was during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 when the church and convent were completely destroyed, burying in its ruins 35 nuns and a high number of inhabitants of the Old Town.
The second convent in Poland was established in Lvov (currently, in Ukraine) in 1715. In 1946, it was repatriated to the Silesia area, and now it is located in the City of Wrocław. The third convent, founded in 1959, is in Siedlce in the Podlasie area.