Venerable Mother Maria Kaupas, born Casmiria Kaupas, was born in Ramygala, Lithuania, in 1880. At that time of Russia rule in Lithuania, Catholics were unable to openly practice their faith as the state religion was Russian Orthodox. Despite this, Casmiria, her parents, and her nine brothers and sisters did their best to keep their Catholic faith alive.
 
In the early 1890’s, Casmiria’s brother, Anthony, emigrated to the United States, became a priest, and was assigned to St. Joseph’s Lithuanian Church in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In 1897 he invited Casmiria to come to the USA as his housekeeper and she agreed. While in Pennsylvania she witnessed the lives of women religious for the first time and was intrigued. Despite moving back to Lithuania four years later, this intrigue continued to stir in her the desire for apostolic religious life. Eventually, under the direction and care of the Sisters of Mercy in Switzerland, she spent three years being educated on religious life, preparing for the work to which she felt called. At the time, the American Lithuanian clergy saw a need to establish a Lithuanian congregation for women in the United States to address the faith and educational needs of those immigrating to the U.S. from Lithuania and the surrounding regions. Casmiria returned to the United States to start this congregation with two other Lithuanian companions who entered into religious life as novitiates, first with the Servants of the Sacred Heart (IHM), before the founding of the new congregation. The congregation she would go on to lead, The Sisters of St. Casmir, was approved by Pope Pius X in 1907 and, on August 30th of the same year, Casmiria and the other two sisters were professed.
 
Originally, Casmiria wanted her Congregation to be named after the Blessed Mother, but Bishop Shanahan, the Congregation’s sponsoring bishop, thought it more appropriate that the name should honor St. Casimir, the patron saint of Lithuania, instead. Conceding to this idea since the sisters would be primarily serving Lithuanian immigrants, Casmiria and her companions received Marian names upon their professions instead. Casmiria became Mother Maria, and her companions became Sister Concepta and Sister Immaculata.
 
Shortly after the establishment of The Sisters of St. Casmir, they opened their first parish convent school, Holy Cross School, in Mt. Carmel, Pennsylvania. This school provided education for children of Lithuanian immigrants and started with over 70 students enrolled. It wasn’t long before other communities were asking the Sisters for educational help. The Sisters of St. Casmir quickly expanded from Pennsylvania to Illinois and, eventually, many other parts of the USA. The Sisters put down their official roots and a Motherhouse in Chicago in 1911 and expanded into healthcare, building and running hospitals after the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919.
 
In 1920, Mother Maria and her sisters were invited by the Bishops of Lithuania to return and start a congregation of the Sisters of St. Casmir there. Russian control of religion in the region was lax due to Russia’s preoccupation with its own revolution so the Sisters took advantage of this and went to expand their Congregation and get down to business helping to educate others in their home country. They rapidly increased in number and opened schools and other institutions all over Lithuania.
 
Mother Maria Kaupas died of cancer at her Motherhouse in Chicago, surrounded by her sisters, on April 17, 1940, after leading the Congregation for almost her entire adult life. On July 1, 2010, the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints named Mother Maria Venerable. Many of the institutions started by Mother Maria remain today as pillars of faith and family for both immigrant and natural born citizens alike in the USA and abroad.