Danica Širola

Danica Vilma Franciska Širola (18 April 1900 - 2 September 1926) was a Croatian school teacher, poet and Catholic laywoman, known as a "Teacher of the holy life" and "Croatian Little Flower". Her poems were published in several Croatian Catholic magazines, and during her lifetime she wrote a spiritual diary and an autobiography. At the age of twenty, she took a vow of virginity. She died at the age of 26, with a reputation for holiness, after a two-year battle with tuberculosis. Her collected works were published in 2021 in Zagreb.

Biography

Early life and education

She was born on 18 April 1900 in Karlovac, as a fourth child of her father Stjepan Širola, school teacher, and mother Ćirila Wyronbaul, a noblewoman. She was baptised as Danica Vilma Franciska. At the age of 2, her family moved to Zagreb due to a father's job. Danica had three brothers (Božidar, Mladen, Branko) and five sisters (Zorka, Marijana, Zlata, Ruža, Mira). Her father Stjepan was also translator and writer, her brother Božidar musicologist and composer, while other brother Mladen was theater and film director and screenwriter.

She attended Donjogradska škola ('Lower Town's School') in Zagreb; although she wanted to attend a convent, she didn't dare express her wish to her parents. After school, she usually stopped by the church of the Sisters of Charity in Frankopanska Street to pray before the Blessed Sacrament. She received her First Communion in 1908, about which she wrote in her autobiography:

Observing the taking of religious vows in the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in 1911, she desired to become a nun. After finishing elementary school, she enrolled in a girls' high school. In the fourth grade, she was accepted into the Congregation of Mary. At that time, she rejected the courtship of a young pharmacist who often wrote her letters from the battlefields of World War I, which she explained in her diary: "I promised Jesus a long time ago, not only promised but gave my heart and soul. Yes, I gave my whole self to the Savior."

She attended preparatory school led by nuns. She regularly went to Holy Mass and developed a devotion to the Eucharist and the Sacred Heart. She soon began to bleed, causing her health to deteriorate in the third grade; parents sent her to Primorje, where she recovered.

Teaching

As a young teacher in 1919, she was first employed as a visiting lecturer at the Borongaj School, where her father Stjepan was the principal, and then at the Girls' Elementary School on Kaptol. Although she wanted to go to the Ursuline convent in Varaždin immediately after graduation, her parents and brothers were against it.

At the age of twenty, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, she took a lifelong vow of virginity, about which she wrote on June 3, 1920 in her autobiography:

Soon, she went to work as a teacher in Krašić, where, at the urging of the parish priest, she taught religious education (''vjeronauk'') and prepared children for their First Communion. She used her teaching salary to support her family and her brother Branko, who was studying in Prague. She was saving the rest of the money for her severance pay to the monastery, and the sisters forgave her dowry. Father wanted her to enroll in the Higher Pedagogical School and to go to the Sisters of Charity in Zagreb, not the Ursulines, which she accepted. Her parents opposed her religious vocation, and she wrote her father's words in her diary: "As long as I am alive, Danica will not enter a monastery!"

Catholic and social work

She made a pilgrimage to Rome, and traveled to Vienna, Prague and Belgrade. In Sarajevo, she visited archbishop Ivan Šarić, with whom she discussed her vocation; they later exchanged several letters. She also visited Knin, Šibenik, Split, Makarska, Omiš, Metković, Mostar and Herceg-Novi. From Krašić, she wrote to the Jesuits in Zagreb, especially to Father Josip Vrbanek, her high school spiritual director, who was also the editor of the ''Glasnik'' ('Herald') and ''Kalendar Srca Isusova'' ('Calendar of the Sacred Heart'), in which her poems were published. She often asked Father Vrbanek for the issues of ''Glasnik'' and prayer books to the Heart of Jesus, which she promoted among pupils and people of Krašić. Danica corresponded with the Ursulines in Varaždin, who addressed her in their letters as "our dear Danica".

Memory

She was included in ''Famous and meritorius Croats and noteworthy people in Croatian history from 925-1925'' with a biographical article.

On the occasion of the 95th anniversary of her death, a memorial plaque was placed on her family grave at Zagreb's Mirogoj Cemetery.

References

Sources

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Širola, Danica
1900 births
1926 deaths
People from Karlovac
20th-century Croatian poets
20th-century Croatian women
Croatian Roman Catholics
Burials at Mirogoj Cemetery
20th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis deaths in Croatia