Congregation of the Sisters of St. Catherine was founded by 19-year-old Regina Protmann in 1571 in Braniewo. Here is a girl from a rich merchant family who, as a teenager, leads a carefree and prosperous life, gradually begins to see behind the walls of her rich tenement house, another reality that is not easy at all, a reality in which she meets people who are lonely and unnoticed, sick, helpless, exploited, thrown out of society, who will not get up from the fall on their own.
As a result, a safe and comfortable life, fashionable clothes, fun and the admiration of others suddenly ceased to matter to the young girl. 19-year-old Regina abandons her comfortable life, parents, sister and brothers and .....
...... No, he does not enter a closed monastery to pray to God in isolation from people for the souls of these poor people, and for a better fate for them in the next life.
Together with two girls, she lived in an empty and old house, where, initially without sufficient means of subsistence, in poverty and cold, they create a community of women who live in religious vows, pray and work together, but not in isolation from society, but reaching out to people the sick and those in need of help - which was a complete novelty at that time.
The path Regina chose attracted other girls, and the small community grew steadily. Regina and her sisters, following the example of Jesus the Merciful Servant, went to serve the little ones. She visited the sick in their homes, dressed wounds, prepared medicines, and brought hope. She shared with the poor, provided them with meals, helped them materially, and took special care of the girls. She opened a school for them, teaching reading, writing, manual work.
For her community, Regina wrote the Rules, i.e. a plan, principles of life, and entrusted the whole work and a group of sisters to St. Catherine of Alexandria, patroness of the church in Braniewo.
Ultimately, these rules were approved by the Church (by the bishop of the Lidzbark Warmiński diocese in 1583).
This is how the Congregation, which exists to this day, was founded. Regina later founded the houses of the Katarzyna sisters in Orneta and Lidzbark Warm. and Reszel.
Already after her death (1613), in later centuries, the activities of the katarzynki expanded to new places: Jeziorany (1852), Bisztynek (1854), Pieniężno (1856), Barczewo (1857), Dobre Miasto (1858), Biskupiec 1859), Olsztyn (1862), Frombork (1863), Tolkmicko (1868), Königsberg (1870).