Marguerite Bourgeoys

Marguerite Bourgeoys was born on 17 April 1620 in Troyes, in the Champagne region of the Kingdom of France, the daughter of Abraham Bourgeoys and Guillemette Garnier. She grew up in a large urban family of modest bourgeois standing and received a practical Christian upbringing. After her mother’s death in 1639 she took charge of the household for her father and younger siblings. On 7 October 1640, during a public rosary procession in Troyes, she experienced a lasting conversion while looking at a statue of the Blessed Virgin, after which she set aside thoughts of marriage. She joined an uncloistered circle of women in Troyes who, in association with the Congregation of Notre-Dame, taught poor girls. Applications to the Carmelites and the Poor Clares were refused, and she remained in this apostolic work in her native city for more than a decade.

In 1652 Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, governor of the missionary settlement of Ville-Marie (later Montreal) in New France, came to France to recruit colonists and a schoolmistress. Through his sister, who belonged to the same Troyes teaching circle, he invited Bourgeoys to the colony. She accepted the invitation as a religious vocation, obtained her father’s consent, and sailed in 1653. She reached Quebec in September and Ville-Marie in November of that year. The settlement was then a small fortified outpost, exposed to harsh winters, scarcity, and Iroquois raids. For several years she nursed the sick, shared the domestic labours of the colonists, and gathered children for informal instruction until numbers justified a regular school.

In 1658 Maisonneuve granted her a stone stable, which she fitted as a classroom, opening the first school in Montreal. Determined that the work should outlive her, she returned to France in 1658–1659 and brought back companions who would live in community without enclosure, teaching girls of French, Indigenous, and mixed origin. This group became the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal, among the first uncloistered women’s communities in North America. Bourgeoys insisted that her sisters remain free to go wherever children needed instruction rather than adopt a cloistered monastic rule. In 1671 she obtained letters patent from King Louis XIV that gave the congregation civil recognition and security for its property. She also promoted the building of the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel as a Marian shrine and place of pilgrimage, and she helped receive and settle the Filles du Roi sent from France to marry colonists. She crossed the Atlantic several times to recruit sisters, obtain resources, and defend the distinctive character of her institute before civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

The congregation gradually opened further schools on Montreal Island and in nearby seigneuries, teaching literacy, household skills, and Christian doctrine. In 1693 Bourgeoys resigned as superior after providing the community with constitutions and a stable form of government. She spent her last years in prayer and in writing spiritual counsel for her sisters, and she died in Montreal on 12 January 1700. She was first buried in the parish church; her remains were later placed in the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel. Popular veneration grew in Canada and France. Pope Pius XII beatified her on 12 November 1950, and Pope John Paul II canonized her on 31 October 1982, making her the first woman who had lived her apostolic life in what is now Canada to be declared a saint. The Church keeps her feast on 12 January. She is invoked for those who have lost their parents, for persons rejected by religious orders, and for people living in poverty, and she is remembered as a pioneer of public education and of active, uncloistered religious life for women in North America.