At Paris in France, Saint Louise de Marillac, widow, who, to relieve the needy, formed by her example the Institute of the Daughters of Charity, fully bringing to completion the work outlined by Saint Vincent de Paul.
Lifespan: 1591–1660
Beatified: 9 May 1920 by Pope Benedict XV
Canonized: 11 March 1934 by Pope Pius XI
Memoria liturgica: 15 March
“Have eyes and heart for the poor alone.”
Born in France in 1591 to Louis de Marillac, Lord of Ferrières and counsellor to the Parliament, the young Louise would never know her true mother. In 1595, her father remarried, and the child, then only four years old, was entrusted to the Dominican Sisters of the Convent of Poissy, where she found a loving environment and received a sound education, humanistic as well as spiritual. Having come of age, Louise felt the call to religious life and sought to embrace the monastic state; her request was refused, however, on account of her fragile health.
Marriage was therefore her remaining path; the choice of husband, governed by the social conventions of the time, fell upon Antoine Le Gras, secretary to the Medici family. The wedding was celebrated in 1613, when Louise was twenty-two, and shortly afterward she became the mother of a son, Michel. Yet the future saint experienced a deep inward crisis: this was not her true vocation, and her soul suffered for it. Nonetheless, as a devoted wife and mother, she gave herself to her family with selfless dedication, nursing her husband through the grave illness that would carry him to the grave in 1626.
On Pentecost Sunday in 1623, while gathered in prayer, Louise received a kind of illumination. “I understood,” she wrote, “that there would come a time when I would be in a position to make the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I understood that it must be in a place for the relief of my neighbour.” The following year, the future saint encountered the man who would enable her to put into practice that spirit of ardent charity, that total self-giving to the love of God which drove her onward: Louise met Vincent de Paul. From that moment forward, this “couple of God” remained indissolubly united in the apostolate and in service to the least, the excluded, and the marginalized.
Vincent, a dynamic and creative priest, organized in Paris and the surrounding villages the “Confraternities of Charity,” composed of generous volunteers eager to help those most in need. It was to Louise that Vincent entrusted these young women, that they might be formed and accompanied in their material and spiritual service. Louise said “yes” to this profoundly innovative project, and on 29 November 1633 the “Daughters of Charity” were officially brought into being — sisters without a cloister who, in de Paul’s own words, had “for monastery the houses of the sick, for cell a rented room, for chapel the parish church, for cloister the streets of the city.” Their mistress and witness was de Marillac herself, who gave herself wholly to helping the young women understand that to serve the poor is to serve Christ, for the poor and Christ are one and the same reality.
The manner of the Daughters of Charity would be one of humble, warm, and compassionate service — a service that reached everywhere. With a basket on their shoulders filled with food, clothing, and medicines, the charitable young women went through the streets of Paris, into the suburbs, into hospitals and prisons, onto battlefields, and into schools where the youngest children learned not only to write and reckon, but also to know and love God.
Louise never spared herself: into every gesture, into every prayer she poured such devotion that Vincent de Paul exclaimed, “Only God knows what strength of soul she possesses!” But the years passed, and the already precarious strength of de Marillac began to fail. At the beginning of 1660, she sensed that the end was near, yet even then she did not cease to encourage her Daughters: “Have eyes and heart for the poor alone,” she urged them. Her heart, worn out by toil, ceased to beat on 15 March 1660. Yet her work did not cease: at present the Company of the Daughters of Charity numbers approximately three thousand houses and more than twenty-seven thousand Sisters across all five continents.
Beatified by Benedict XV on 9 May 1920 and canonized by Pius XI on 11 March 1934, Louise de Marillac was proclaimed by John XXIII the Patroness of Social Workers on 10 February 1960. Her remains rest in the chapel of the Motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity in Paris, while a statue in her memory stands in the Basilica of Saint Peter.