Mary Jane Wilson

Mary Jane Wilson DamTE (3 October 1840 – 18 October 1916), also known as  Sister Maria of Saint Francis (Irmã Maria de São Francisco), was an Englishwoman born in India who founded the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Our Lady of Victories. Wilson was declared venerable by Pope Francis.

Biography
Wilson was born in Hurryhur, Mysore to English parents, and grew up in the Anglican faith. After the death of her parents she moved to England to the care of an aunt. She converted to Catholicism, and was baptised in France on 11 May 1873.

In 1881 she moved to Madeira island, in Portugal, to nurse an Englishwoman. She settled in Funchal and lived the rest of her life on Madeira. In 1884 she co-founded, with Amélia Amaro de Sá, the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Our Lady of Victories (FNSV, in Portuguese: Congregação das Irmãs Franciscanas de Nossa Senhora das Vitórias). In 1907 she nursed patients throughout a smallpox epidemic, and was awarded the honour of Tower and Sword (Torre e Espada). The revolution of October 1910 forced her to leave Madeira, but she returned a year later. She died in Madeira, aged 76, on 18 October 1916. She was declared venerable on 9 October 2013.

A small museum in Funchal is dedicated to her life and work, and there is a sculpture of her, by Luís Paixão, in the municipal gardens in Santa Cruz. Furthermore, in Largo Severiano Ferraz, also in Funchal, there is a bronze statue of her likeness, sculpted in 2006 by Ricardo Velosa. A book on her life, The invincible Victorian, the life of Mary Jane Wilson by Terry Dunphy, was published in about 1950 by the Franciscan Sisters of Our Lady of Victories.

Honours

 * Order of the Tower and Sword - Ribbon bar.svg Dame of Order of Tower and Sword, Portugal (1907)