St. Louise de Marillac

Who they were

Louise de Marillac carried wounds from birth. She was illegitimate, acknowledged by her father and never named by her mother, and she had a scrupulous, anxious temperament all her life, which is worth saying because it is half of what she is asked for. The Church's patron of social workers was not serene by nature.

Widowed at thirty four after nursing a difficult, dying husband, she came under the direction of St. Vincent de Paul, and the partnership remade charity itself. In 1633 they founded the Daughters of Charity, the first community of active, uncloistered women to survive, under Vincent's charter that their monastery would be the houses of the sick and their cloister the streets of the city. Louise was its working genius: she trained peasant girls into professional nurses, organized foundling homes, hospitals and parish charities across France, and wrote rules with a caseworker's precision. She died in 1660, months before Vincent, was canonized in 1934, and in 1960 St. John XXIII named her patron of all who devote themselves to Christian social work.

Why people turn to St. Louise de Marillac

Social workers, case managers and parish outreach coordinators, whose formal patron she is. Widows building a second vocation, with St. Bridget of Sweden and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. And the anxious who serve anyway, which her own temperament makes her fit to hear.

How to ask their intercession

Before the caseload, ask for her precision and Vincent's warmth together. St. Alberto Hurtado and St. Vincent de Paul are the rest of that chain.