Mary Hermina of Jesus

Irma Grivot, known in religion as Marie-Hermine of Jesus, was born on 28 April 1866 in Beaune, in the Côte-d'Or of Burgundy, France. She grew up in a Catholic family in late nineteenth-century France and in young adulthood worked as a tutor. After seeking a missionary vocation, she entered the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, a congregation founded in 1877 by Hélène de Chappotin de Neuville (Mother Mary of the Passion) for apostolic work among the poor. She received the religious name Marie-Hermine of Jesus. Contemporary biographies note that other communities had hesitated to accept her, in part because of concerns about her health, before the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary received her in the mid-1890s.

After formation and profession she was assigned to the China mission. In 1899 she reached Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province in northern China, and served as superior of a small international community of Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. The sisters conducted an orphanage, assisted the sick, and supported the Franciscan bishops and clergy of the vicariate. The Taiyuan house numbered seven sisters: Marie-Hermine of Jesus herself and companions of French, Dutch, Belgian, and Italian origin, including Marie de Sainte-Nathalie (Jeanne-Marie Kerguin), Marie de Saint-Just (Anne-Françoise Moreau), Marie-Adolphine, Marie-Amandine, Marie-Claire, and Marie de la Paix.

In 1900 the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising, spread across northern China. In Shanxi, Governor Yuxian carried out a harsh campaign against missionaries and Chinese Christians. On 9 July 1900 foreign missionaries and a number of Chinese Catholics were summoned to the governor’s yamen in Taiyuan, ostensibly for protection, and there put to death by beheading. Among those killed were Bishop Gregorio Grassi, Bishop Francesco Fogolla, Franciscan friars, seminarians, lay faithful, and the seven Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. Catholic tradition records that Marie-Hermine, as superior, encouraged her sisters in their last moments and asked to die after them. She was thirty-four years old.

The Taiyuan dead were later numbered among the Martyrs of China. Pope Pius XII beatified Marie-Hermine of Jesus and her Shanxi companions on 24 November 1946. On 1 October 2000 Pope John Paul II canonized her with 119 other martyrs associated with China, a group spanning several centuries. Their collective liturgical memorial is kept on 9 July. She is venerated as a virgin martyr of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary and as one of the saints of the Catholic Church in China.