Blessed Marie Rose Durocher
Virgin
- Feast Day
- October 6
- Life
- 1811–1849
- Order
- Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary
- Born
- Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, Lower Canada (Quebec)
Marie-Rose-Eulalie Durocher was born at Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu in Lower Canada on 6 October 1811. After her schooling at the Congregation of Notre-Dame in Montreal, she served for thirteen years as housekeeper for her brother, the parish priest of Saint-Mathieu de Beloeil, where she organized the first Canadian parish association of devout young women.
Encouraged by Bishop Ignace Bourget of Montreal, she founded on 28 October 1843 with two companions the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, dedicated to the education of girls in the parishes of French Canada. The first foundation opened at Longueuil. Despite poverty, internal trials, and her own poor health, the congregation grew to eight houses by her death. She died at Longueuil on 6 October 1849 at the age of thirty-eight.
Pope Saint John Paul II beatified her at Rome on 23 May 1982. Her Optional Memorial on 6 October is observed in the United States and Canada.
Marie Rose Durocher belongs to the great Catholic foundresses of the nineteenth-century Americas, who built the educational and charitable infrastructure of an immigrant Church. Her congregation today continues its educational apostolate in North America, Africa, and Latin America.
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