St. Marguerite Bourgeoys

Who they were

Marguerite Bourgeoys of Troyes crossed to the tiny palisaded settlement of Ville Marie, which is Montreal, population a few hundred, in 1653, recruited as its first schoolmistress. She then waited five years for enough children to survive infancy to be worth teaching, and opened Montreal's first school in 1658 in a stone stable.

Out of it she built the Congregation of Notre Dame: women vowed to God who travelled, taught, and lived among the people without cloister. She defended that form through decades of pressure and repeated Atlantic crossings until Rome approved her rule in 1698, one of the first uncloistered communities of women ever confirmed. She met the filles du roi, the young women shipped over to marry settlers, at the dock, housed them, and prepared them for a life none of them had chosen. She died in 1700, having offered her own life's suffering for a dying young sister, who recovered. Canonized in 1982, she was Canada's first woman saint, and with St. Marguerite d'Youville the Montreal pair is complete.

Why people turn to St. Marguerite Bourgeoys

Teachers in under resourced places, where the stable school is the whole patronage, with St. Joseph Calasanz and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. Everyone who meets newcomers at the dock, the airport, or the parish door, which is what resettlement ministry actually is. Canadian families.

How to ask their intercession

At the school supply drive, the language class, the welcome table, for her particular specialty, which was making arrival survivable.