The oldest Vincentine sister in Czech Republic. She had to wait for ten years to take her solemn wows
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Anežka Wilczeková, or Sister Leonie, was born on the 24th of September in 1924 to a Catholic family in Třanovice in the Těšín region. She was one of seven children. Her father was a shoemaker and the family owned a smallholding. She recalls life during the WWII when the Těšín area was a part of the German Reich and the inhabitants were under pressure of Germanisation. In 1950, Anežka joined the Company of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. At the very same time, the Communist régime was starting the disbandment of convents and religious orders. Along with several other sisters who served patients with long-term illnesses and the dying, she was not interned. She took her solemn wows in secret only ten years after finishing the novitiate. The order sent her to a secondary nursing school to Kroměříž, where she graduated. After the Vincentine sisters had to leave their seat in Kroměříž, she served, among others, in a centre for social care in Terezín near Litoměřice. For four years, she lived in Bílá Voda near Javorník where the Communists expelled sisters from various orders. After the fall of the Communist régime, she served as a housekeeper in the restituted provincial house in Kroměříž. In 2021, she lived in a retirement home in Frýdek-Místek where a small community of Vincentine sisters was active.
