Ileana of Romania: Princess, Exile and Mother Superior

Princess Ileana of Romania (1909-1991), known later in life as Mother Alexandra, was the youngest daughter of King Ferdinand I of Romania and his consort, Queen Marie.Kind, intelligent, and beautiful, she was exalted among the royal courts of Europe and the darling of the Romanian people.She married Archduke Anton of Austria in 1931 and made Schloss Sonnberg her home before returning to Romania during World War II, where she converted the famous Bran Castle into a hospital for wounded soldiers.Exiled after the Soviet occupation of 1944, she eventually settled near Boston, Massachusetts, where Senator John F.Kennedy helped her on the path to citizenship. Having pawned the magnificent Vladimir Sapphire Kokoshnik crown, once the possession of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, to buy a home and raise her six children in relative security, life could have taken a predictable course from then on-but not so for the princess.In 1961 she travelled to France to train as a monastic, and six