Mère Marie of the Ursulines

The early history of Quebec, “the rocky perch of France and of the Faith” in the New World, is incomplete without the story of Mère Marie. Called from a young age to a religious life, she received her first mystical experience at the age of seven. After a brief marriage cut short by the death of her husband, Marie was accepted into the Ursuline convent in Tours in 1631. Upon receiving further mystical experiences depicting her in a foreign land, she received permission to join the Jesuit mission in Quebec. There she founded, in 1639, the first convent school in North America, where she lived for thirty-three years, moving heroically but always calmly through the turbulent, harsh environment that was New France. To our great good fortune, this truly remarkable woman found a worthy biographer in Agnes Repplier, who tells Mère Marie’s story movingly, displaying her special gifts of accuracy of phrase, urbanity of manner, and incisiveness of mind, which won her renown as a gifted essayist in her own right. In Mère Marie of the Ursulines we are blessed doubly: the story of an inspiring Catholic religious, told by a consummate storyteller.