St. Marguerite Bourgeoys

Feast date: Jan 12

On Jan. 12, Roman Catholics remember Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys, who not only founded a religious congregation, but was also instrumental in establishing the Canadian city of Montreal.

Marguerite Bourgeoys was born on Good Friday of 1620 during a period of both colonial expansion and religious strife for Europe. She was the seventh of thirteen children born into the middle-class household of Abraham Bourgeoys, a candle-maker, and Guillemette Gamier, in the northeastern province of Champagne in France.

By her own account, Marguerite had been “very light-hearted and well-liked by the other girls” while growing up. Her turn toward God's calling began in 1640, not long after her mother's death. On Oct. 7 of that year, during a procession honoring Our Lady of the Rosary, Marguerite had a mystical experience involving a statue of the Virgin Mary at Notre-Dame Abbey.

“We passed again in front of the portal of Notre-Dame, where there was a stone image above the door,” Marguerite later recounted. “When I looked up and saw it I thought it was very beautiful, and at the same time I found myself so touched and so changed that I no longer knew myself, and on my return to the house everybody noticed the change.”

In later life, Marguerite would live out a profound imitation of the Virgin Mary – who was, as she noted, “not cloistered,” but “everywhere preserved an internal solitude” and “never refused to be where charity or necessity required help.” During the 17th century, it was unusual for consecrated women to have an active apostolate outside the cloister as Marguerite would go on to do.

From 1640 to 1652, she belonged to the non-cloistered “external” branch of the Congregation of Notre-Dame at Troyes, consisting of women trained as teachers in association with the order. She also sought admission to several religious orders, including the Carmelites, but was rejected. Being turned down, the teacher from Troyes was free to volunteer for a 1653 voyage to the Canadian colony of Quebec.

Life in the colony was physically very difficult. When Marguerite arrived, she found that children were not likely to survive to an age suitable for attending school. Nevertheless, she began to work with the nurse in charge of Montreal’s hospital, and eventually established her first school in a stable in 1658.

She traveled back to France that year, and returned to Montreal with three more teachers and an assistant. Because of their association with the original French Congregation of Notre-Dame, these women were called the the “Daughters of the Congregation.”

They would eventually become a religious order in their own right: the Congregation of Notre-Dame de Montreal, whose sisters sacrificed comfort and security to teach religion and other subjects to the children of the territory then known as “New France.” They would live in poverty and travel wherever they were needed, offering education and performing the works of mercy.

The founding of the order involved two further trips to France in 1670 and 1680. During the first, Marguerite's project received approval under civil law from King Louis XIV. The church hierarchy, however, showed reluctance toward a women's order with no cloistered nuns. Their rule of life would not receive final approval until 1698, though the Bishop of Quebec had authorized their work in 1676.

Meanwhile, Marguerite and her companions persisted in their mission of teaching and charity. This work proved so integral to life in Quebec, that Marguerite became known as the “Mother of the Colony.”

Though the teaching sisters often lived in huts and suffered other hardships, the order grew. They did not dedicate themselves solely to teaching children, but also set up schools where they taught new immigrants how to survive in their surroundings. As the order expanded, Marguerite passed leadership on to one of the sisters.

During the last two years of her life, the foundress – known by then as Sister Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament – retired to pray in solitude. On the last day of 1699, after a young member of the community became sick, Sister Marguerite prayed to God to suffer in her place. The young woman recovered, while the aged foundress suffered for twelve days and died Jan. 12, 1700.

Blessed Pope John Paul II canonized St. Marguerite Bourgeoys in 1982, as the first woman saint of the Catholic Church in Canada.

Commenting on the European Commission’s rejection of a FAFCE grant request, Vincenzo Bassi said that “when you propose the family as an irreplaceable subject to the European institutions, they do everything to exclude you.”

“They let us know that FAFCE’s approach is contrary to the principles of equality of the European Union,” he continued. “Now, our approach is nothing more than to indicate to European society the family as an example of a solution not only for social but also economic problems. So according to them, the family experience is contrary to the principles of equality because it does not respect gender equality.”

What the EU cannot tolerate, Bassi said, is that “we do not renounce the complementarity between man and woman, the maternal and paternal roles, and we consider the family as a socioeconomic unit in which the necessary collaboration between man and woman is crucial.”

“My heart is filled with sorrow for the ritual murders that are staining our beloved country with blood,” Bishop Jean Vincent Ondo Éyéne of Oyem said on the recent National Day for Combating All Forms of Violence and Attacks on Life. “I think of those who have been taken from life, whose bodies have been desecrated, and whose innocence has been broken.”

The central African nation of 2.5 million (map) is 84% Christian (52% Catholic) and 11% Muslim, with 3% adhering to ethnic religions.

“The ironclad manipulation of the process is an insult to the dignity of the bishops, and the continual reference to the Holy Spirit is ridiculous and almost blasphemous,” Cardinal Zen said in reference to the 2021-24 synod on synodality.

Cardinal Zen added, “They expect surprises from the Holy Spirit. What surprises? That he should repudiate what he inspired in the Church’s two-thousand-year tradition?”

With the prelate’s permission, the College of Cardinals Report published the full text of Cardinal Zen’s remarks at the consistory. Cardinal Zen strongly criticized “Bergoglian synodality,” a reference to Pope Francis.

“Thai bulldozers are razing the homes of Cambodian civilians for miles, and barbed wire and shipping containers block access to the villages,” said Bishop Olivier Schmitthaeusler, MEMP. “Temples, sacred places par excellence for the veneration of the gods and the memory of humanity, have been reduced to dust. And the world is silent.”

“Despite a ceasefire, hundreds of thousands of civilians and children remain in squalid camps,” he continued. “Today, Cambodia also wants its voice heard, demanding justice and reparation on the world stage, where the power of force seems to have become the new rule.”

Writing in Ireland’s leading newspaper, McAleese charged that infant baptism violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).

Barbón said that he shared with the Pope his “concern about the drift toward tension, conflicts, and wars that are ravaging the world, and also to speak to him about Asturias, its history, culture, and natural heritage. Also about its people, whom I represent with enormous pride.”

“It has been an emotional visit, and with the respectful reserve that I must maintain, I assure you that I left it with an immense feeling of peace,” he added.

“I was honoured to have a private audience with His Holiness Pope Leo XIV,” Boland said in a brief social media post. “It was a privilege to hear first hand the insights which underpin the Holy Father’s moral leadership. I am also deeply grateful for the opportunity to convey to his Holiness my EESC priorities.”

Pope Leo XIV has named Archbishop Felice Accrocca of Benevento, Italy, as the new bishop of the Diocese of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino.

In the most prominent front-page article in its January 10 edition, L’Osservatore Romano highlighted the plight of Catholics in Yemen (map) amid the nation’s civil war.