According to God’s providence, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the year 1920, the Congregation of the Daughters of Mercy, Third Order Regular of St Francis, was established in Blato na Korčuli. In establishing it, the good Lord made use of Miss Marija Petković-Kovač, daughter of the late Antun from Blato on the island of Korčula, and of the then Bishop of Dubrovnik, Dr Josip Marčelić. Thus Marija of the Crucified Petković – both in her homeland and throughout the world, together with her Congregation – became all things to all people in life-giving goodness, bearing witness to Christ’s presence in the world until he comes. She founded and set in motion her small community so that it might do good among the most vulnerable, and so that this community might become a sower and witness of good in this joyless world, this true valley of tears.

Marija had exemplary parents, and she loved her father in particular, whom she regarded as a "living saint". In childhood, surrounded by his love and by the good Christian upbringing of her mother, within a family atmosphere that the Second Vatican Council, some sixty years later, would call a "domestic Church", Marija showed an unusual piety and inclination towards meditation, yet she also happily kept company with the poorest girls from the neighbourhood and secretly helped them.

Marija Petković-Kovač was the daughter of very wealthy and respected parents, Antun and Marija, née Marinović. As wealthy and respected as her parents were, they were even more virtuous, devout and God-fearing. Her good and upright parents were, for Marija, a special happiness and a gift from God. Although they were the wealthiest family on the island of Korčula, her father was a very simple man. He managed his large estate himself and with few words. In religious terms he was a practising Catholic. Righteousness, mercy and love adorned his devout soul. He was a man of living faith and a serious observer of the holy commandments of God and of the Church. He took up the cause of the wretched and the poor with fatherly care. He always approached his farm labourers, of whom there were about 700 from all the villages of the island of Korčula, with love. He treated everyone justly and gently. He never missed his daily prayers, and every evening he would gather all the members of his family, and, in Babina, also his workers who were near the house, for the communal praying of the Holy Rosary. At the end, he would usually give those present good advice and instruction.

Every Sunday and feast day, during the meal, the holy Gospel of that day was read aloud in their family. After the reading, the father and mother would lead a conversation before the children about the meaning of the holy Gospel. Her mother, too, was a very good and devout woman, and raised her children in the fear of God, in strictness, in the virtues, in work, simplicity, humility, penance and prayer. She never let her children leave the house without her supervision. She was especially careful about whom they associated with, so that her children were not allowed to spend time even with their own schoolfriends outside of school. In Marija’s childhood, her mother appointed her a special companion, who would sometimes come to keep her company. This was one of the best and most devout of the girls. Thus Marija, like all her brothers, knew nothing in childhood and girlhood beyond her parents’ house, the church and the school.

Between the ages of 5 and 6, while visiting her aunt during evening prayer, she had her first mystical experience: "Looking up towards the sky and the vault of heaven which the moon was lighting up, while my aunt was saying the Creed, I was as though immersed in God, and I could not say the Creed, because I already, as it were, truly felt and beheld the heavenly Father who embraces everything, and I thought:  why do we say ‘I believe in God the Father’, as though one could doubt that he exists. And I said to Him: O my God, since you alone are, and you hold us all. You are everything, and as I said this I watched how God spread his arms towards me and at the same time embraced everything – holding everything, with everything in his hand, and everything was so tiny and lost in him, the sky and the sea and the houses, and I was there with everything, and how everything hovered in him as in a single breath, and I beheld it all as something incomparably small and worthless before him. And so, feeling and beholding God in this way, I could not say ‘I believe’, so as not to offend him, since he was there more truly and more clearly than we ourselves. Just as when a child looks at the mother who is holding it, it would hardly say ‘I believe I have a mother.’

The school was located in one of their houses, right next to their home, and the church was not even 50 metres away from the house. For Marija, her parents kept a private tutor in the house from the age of 9 to 11, who educated her and accompanied her to school. Marija had 12 brothers. Her father had married twice, since his first wife died young. From his first marriage he had two children. In his second marriage he had 11 children, and Marija was the eighth in order. Her parents regarded their children as a special gift from God, and, conscious of their responsibility, raised them conscientiously, above all for God. Thus, from her earliest childhood, Marija was in a constant school of virtue. Of all the children, Marija was the most closely bonded with her father, and her father, too, loved Marija and trusted her more than the other children. He chose her to help him manage the many estates he owned, which she continued to do even after his death. In her Notes we read: "For all the children, our father was something sacred. I, especially, saw in my father a living saint, for whom my soul, after God, was enraptured. My father was, after God, my ideal, my love, whom I loved with such veneration, as something sacred, because he was so good and merciful to the poor…, so simple and truthful, like pure gold."

            From her experience of her relationship with her earthly father, Marija lived and understood God as a merciful and good Father. She spread devotion to the heavenly Father. She writes to Pope Pius XII: "In our Eternal Father, almighty, great and full of love, everything lives and everything exists; he is the one from whom everything proceeds and to whom everything returns." The Father’s love is manifested in its fullness in the Son: "Behold, I am on the cross to love the Father and to die for him. But my love does not die. I die to multiply love for the Father in hearts. I die to win for the Father millions of hearts." In one letter to the sisters she says: "My dear sisters, exercise yourselves the whole day long in love and trust towards your all-good Father, surrendering yourselves to him completely." In the Congregation she also dedicated the month of December to God the Father. So that the sisters might deepen their devotion and their bond with the Father, she had the book "Encounter with the Father" translated, and set as a task the study of the theme of fatherhood, so that they might have "an experience of the heavenly Father and his love". She gave them the example of St Francis, who once withdrew into solitude to pray, but stayed away for a very long time. When he did not return, his brothers went to look for him and found him in ecstasy. Asked how he had remained so long in prayer, Francis replied that he had "begun to pray the Our Father, but already at those first words his soul was raised up to heaven, and he remained a long time in conversation with the Father. Travelling through the world, I have seen that the world does not know the heavenly Father…"

She wanted to extend love for the heavenly Father to the whole Church, to the fathers of the Second Vatican Council; she wrote about this to three popes, and she wanted to extend it to the whole world, since it "began to reveal itself in my little soul from the age of six, and all my life I have longed to speak to others about this Holy Father." To Paul VI, while he was still Archbishop of Milan, she sent as a gift Monsignor Guerry’s book entitled Let Us Go to the Father, so that "the world might come to know the Father, his goodness and mercy, and glorify him."

          For a long time, Franciscan and Dominican Fathers, as well as other priests and religious, had come to Marija’s house almost every week. This continued until Marija left her parents’ house. They would often come to Blato to help the parish priest with pastoral work: for hearing confessions, for Lenten preaching, for leading the Third Order, or for other purposes. They would lodge and take their meals in Marija’s house as though it were their own monastery. Very often they would stay for several days, since Blato is the largest parish in the Diocese of Dubrovnik. In her parents’ house, two rooms were always set aside solely for the Fathers. Thus little Marija was raised not only by her good parents, but also by these Fathers, whose teachings and counsel she, as a girl, always gladly listened to and absorbed into her young soul.

          Already from early on in her family, Marija received her first and strong feelings of love for God and neighbour, and especially for the wretched poor, towards whom she showed a particular inclination. In her neighbourhood there lived some very poor families. Although she came from a wealthy household, she very gladly visited and spent time with them. In their company she felt a special sweetness and blessedness. Later, in her adult years, she often longed for some poor hut or a hermitage, or else to become a servant in some convent, and to use her paternal inheritance to found an institution for the poor and neglected children of her native place. The poor, and especially poor children, were closest to her soul; they were like siblings to her. She also gladly visited the sick poor. And when they told her their sad stories, she would sit on a piece of wood beside their bed and, weeping with emotion, console them with moving episodes from Holy Scripture, and encourage them to bear their poverty, misery and bodily pain with patience. It was not a rare occurrence for her to visit even the houses of the sick, hardened sinners, and through her efforts and persuasion to bring their souls to God. In this way, the thought and desire matured more and more within her to renounce the world entirely, and, out of love for God, to consecrate herself as a sacrifice devoted exclusively to the upbringing of poor and neglected children and to helping the wretched and the needy.

          At the school run by the Ancelle della Carità sisters in Blato,  during one visit, the diocesan bishop, Dr Josip Marčelić, came to know her when she was 13 years old. The Lord gave him to understand his divine intentions and plans for this child, for he called her especially to himself and, with eyes lifted to heaven, laid his holy hand upon her head and blessed her. From that time on he began to guide her spiritually and to advise her in writing. Thus, indeed, the Lord himself, in his supreme wisdom, had prepared everything for his chosen one: her origin, her family, her surroundings and the nearness of the church, so that his chosen flower might be surrounded by special attention and be able to develop favourably beneath the warm rays of God’s grace.

          And later, at the most fitting and most needed time, he gave her, in Bishop Dr Josip Marčelić, a spiritual director, through whom, along with the rest of the work of his divine grace within her soul, he led her to fulfil his holy will and realise his holy plans for her. At the age of 14, Marija made a perpetual vow of virginity and love, and faithfully renewed it to her Jesus at Holy Communion, which she received almost every day, with fervent and ardent promises that she would never love anyone but him. In those years, Bishop Dr Josip Marčelić founded in Blato the Society of the Daughters of Mary, that is, the Marian Congregation. She was among its first members. She was immediately elected secretary of the Society. She was very active and ran all the affairs of the Society together with the Ancelle sisters, who were in Blato at the time. Three years later she was elected president of the Society and, at the unanimous wish of all its members, remained so for ten uninterrupted years, until her entry into the convent. Through her good example she drew young women into the Society, so that over those ten years the number of members grew to 300. But Marija did not limit herself only to work in the Marian Congregation; through some inner inspiration, she also founded the Good Shepherd Association to help the sick poor, and the Catholic Mothers’ Society. She was also a member of the Third Order of St Francis, and to them too she gave devotional addresses every week. She led all four societies until her entry into the convent.

          At around the age of 25, she felt a clearer calling to establish a religious congregation for the upbringing and education of poor children, and for helping the wretched and the neglected. A few years later, the Lord clearly showed her that he wanted the establishment of a religious congregation for the spreading of his love and the glory of the Father. He gave her to understand his wish that this congregation should be specially consecrated to his love, that he might find in it a milieu for his love, a place where he could rest peacefully as in Bethany, among chosen souls who understand and wish to live his spirit: the spirit of humility, self-denial and mercy. The good Lord showed her this same thing also through Bishop Dr Josip Marčelić. In her humility she hesitated and, in a certain sense, struggled with the Lord to let her withdraw into the solitude of some enclosed convent, for which she longed with her whole heart. Yet, in this struggle of many years, grace finally triumphed. God’s plans were fulfilled, and the Congregation is today a reality. Its members sacrifice themselves and work for the glory of God, the help of their neighbour, and the salvation of immortal souls on both sides of the world.