At Montreal in the province of Quebec in Canada, Blessed Marie-Émilie Tavernier, religious, who, bereaved of her husband and her children, devoted herself to attending the needy and founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Providence for the care of orphans, the aged, and the mentally afflicted.
Lifespan: 1800–1851
Beatified: 7 October 2001 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 23 September
“She had a heart open to every suffering, serving above all the poor and the lowly, whom she desired to treat as kings.”
— Pope John Paul II
Marie-Émilie Tavernier was born in Montreal on 19 February 1800 to modest but virtuous and hardworking parents. She was the last of fifteen children born of the Tavernier-Maurice union. Her parents departed early for heaven, yet left their children a Christian upbringing marked by a sense of Providence at work in their lives.
At the age of four, Émilie was entrusted to the care of a paternal aunt who immediately recognized in her ward a tender and loving inclination toward the poor and the destitute.
When her brother was left a widower, she felt it her duty to go and help him — she was already eighteen — and she asked no payment, stipulating only that there should always be a table set for any beggars who might come to the door: a table she lovingly called “the King’s Table.”
In 1823, Émilie married Jean-Baptiste Gamelin, by trade an apple grower. In him she found a friend of the poor, fully in accord with her own aspirations. Émilie and her husband had three children, but her joy was clouded by their deaths and by the death of her husband, with whom she had lived in faithful happiness according to their marriage vows.
Though afflicted by these various trials, she did not fold in upon herself and her suffering, but sought and found in Our Lady of Sorrows the model upon which to orient her entire life.
Her prayer and contemplation of the Virgin Mary at the foot of the Cross opened for her the way to a charity full of compassion for all those caught in the grip of suffering of every kind. These people would now take the place of her children and her husband.
A mentally disabled poor man and his mother opened the list of those who would become her beneficiaries — not only of the resources left to her by her husband, but also of her time, her devotion, her well-being, her leisure, and her very health. Her home became their home, and she sought to enlarge it to receive the destitute, the elderly, orphans, prisoners, immigrants, the unemployed, the deaf-mute, young people and couples in difficulty, and the physically and intellectually disabled. All knew her dwelling well and spontaneously called it “the House of Providence,” for she herself, Émilie, was a “true Providence.”
At home, in prisons, with the sick and with the well alike, Émilie was welcomed with a smile because she brought comfort and assistance. She was truly the Gospel in action: “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you have done to me.”
Relatives and friends gathered around to support and help her; others, however, seeing her open still more houses, misread her work and went so far as to say: “Madame Gamelin didn’t have enough madmen — now she is adding more!”
Over a period of fifteen years she multiplied her acts of heroism and dedication, under the benevolent, grateful, and approving gaze, first of Bishop Jean-Jacques Lartigue, and then of the second Bishop of Montreal, Bishop Ignace Bourget. A life so precious to his flock must not be allowed to disappear, but must rather be assured of its continuation.
On a journey to Paris in 1841, Bishop Bourget sought reinforcements among the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul for Madame Émilie Gamelin’s work, and to lay the foundations of a new religious community. An affirmative reply came, and Montreal saw a new building rise to receive them. But at the last moment the expected sisters did not arrive, and Providence prepared other plans.
The work of Madame Émilie Gamelin would continue in spite of everything!
Bishop Bourget turned to his own diocese, and young Canadian women were sent to Madame Gamelin. She formed them in the work of compassionate charity that she herself lived with love, devotion, and sacrifice, and in the mission of Providence that she proclaimed through deeds more eloquent than words.
In the House of Providence, the Sisters of Providence began their work in the Church of Montreal, and Émilie Tavernier-Gamelin joined the group of the first religious — first as a novice, then as Mother and Foundress. The first profession of vows took place on 29 March 1844.
The needs of the poor, the sick, immigrants, and others did not cease to grow in a city and a society in the course of development.
The nascent community would know its dark hours when deaths during epidemic times reduced its numbers, and when Bishop Bourget, under the influence of a suspicious and mistrustful religious, called into question the goodwill of the superior. But the Foundress remained steadfast at the foot of the Cross, after the example of Our Lady of Sorrows, her model since the painful hours of her widowhood. The Bishop himself would acknowledge her greatness of soul and her generosity carried to the point of heroism.
The new community grew to meet the needs of the moment. The Sisters of Providence saw their numbers grow and multiply until they reached fifty; and when the Foundress herself succumbed, a victim of the cholera epidemic of 1851 — only eight years after the beginning of the Providence community — her daughters gathered from her dying lips the last testament of their Mother: humility, simplicity, charity, and above all charity.
From such a modest beginning, no fewer than 6,147 young women have pledged themselves to follow Émilie Tavernier-Gamelin. Today these sisters are found in Canada, the United States, Chile, Argentina, Haiti, Cameroon, Egypt, the Philippines, and El Salvador.
Pope John Paul II promulgated the decree on heroic virtues on 23 December 1993. After the official recognition of a miracle attributed to her intercession on 18 December 2000, the Supreme Pontiff proclaimed her Blessed on 7 October 2001, proposing her to the people of God as a model of holiness for a life spent in the service of the poorest brothers and sisters in society, and fixed her liturgical feast on 23 September, the anniversary of her death on that day in 1851.