Marguerite d'Youville

Marie-Marguerite d'Youville was born Marie-Marguerite Dufrost de Lajemmerais on 15 October 1701 at Varennes in New France, the eldest child of Christophe Dufrost de Lajemmerais, a French officer, and Marie-Renée Gaultier de Varennes. Her father died in 1708, leaving the family in poverty. Despite these hardships she spent two years at the Ursuline convent school in Quebec City, receiving a religious and practical education, then returned home to help her mother raise her younger siblings.

In 1722 she married François-Madeleine d'Youville, a Montreal fur trader and merchant. The marriage was unhappy: her husband was often absent, trafficked liquor illegally with Indigenous peoples, and was unfaithful. Of their six children, four died in infancy; two sons, François and Charles, lived to adulthood and both became priests. François d'Youville died in 1730, leaving Marguerite a widow of twenty-nine with debts and two young sons. She opened a small shop to support her family, settled her husband's debts, and began to devote herself to the poor of Montreal.

On 31 December 1737, with three companions, she founded a community dedicated to serving the destitute, which became the Sisters of Charity of Montreal, known as the Grey Nuns. The popular name originated as an insult, playing on the French word grise, which can mean both grey and tipsy, because critics accused the women of drunkenness and of associating with prostitutes, foundlings, and outcasts. In 1747 they took charge of Montreal's failing Hôpital Général. Under her leadership the sisters cared for the elderly, the sick, abandoned children, prisoners, enslaved people, and, after the British Conquest of 1760, even enemy soldiers. When fire destroyed the hospital in 1765, she organized its rebuilding.

Marguerite d'Youville died in Montreal on 23 December 1771. The congregation she founded expanded throughout Canada and into the United States and other countries, working in hospitals, schools, and social services. She was beatified by Pope John XXIII on 3 May 1959 and canonized by Pope John Paul II on 9 December 1990, becoming the first saint born on Canadian soil. Her liturgical feast is kept on 16 October. She is venerated as a patron of widows, of those enduring difficult marriages, and of parents who have suffered the death of children.