St. Marguerite d'Youville

Who they were

Marguerite Dufrost de Lajemmerais married Francois d'Youville of Montreal and got eight years of documented misery: a husband who traded liquor illegally, gambled, neglected her, and died leaving her twenty eight, pregnant, and buried in his debts, having already buried four of her six children in infancy.

She paid the debts, ran a small goods shop to raise her two sons, both of whom became priests, and began taking destitute women into her home. When she and three companions formed a community in 1737, Montreal society had its joke ready: les soeurs grises, the grey sisters, a pun meaning the tipsy sisters, her late husband's reputation poured over her work. Her answer is the whole biography in one move. She adopted the name, and the Grey Nuns wear the insult as their title to this day. She took over Montreal's collapsing General Hospital and made it shelter for everyone: the aged, the disabled, foundlings, and even enemy soldiers during the war. When fire levelled it in 1765 she was sixty four, and she rebuilt. She was canonized in 1990, the first Canadian born saint.

Why people turn to St. Marguerite d'Youville

Anyone wearing a ridicule they did not earn, especially spouses and children carrying a family member's reputation. Widows left with the debts and the children, with St. Bridget of Sweden and St. Elizabeth of Hungary.

How to ask their intercession

Under the joke that stings, ask for her move: the grace to pick the insult up and make it a uniform.