Blessed Émilie Gamelin, Foundress of the Sisters of Providence of Montreal

Who was Blessed Émilie Gamelin?

Blessed Émilie Tavernier Gamelin was a widow of Montreal who turned her grief into a lifetime of charity and founded one of Canada's great religious congregations, the Sisters of Providence. By the time she was twenty-eight she had buried her parents, her husband and all three of her little sons. She found comfort at the foot of the Cross with Our Lady of Sorrows, and then she opened her door to the old, the sick, the orphaned and the imprisoned of her city.

Pope John Paul II, beatifying her in 2001, said that "she was especially the servant of the poor and the little ones, whom she wished to treat like kings."

The life of Blessed Émilie

A Montreal childhood marked by loss

Émilie Tavernier was born in Montreal on February 19, 1800, the youngest of fifteen children of Antoine Tavernier and Marie-Josephte Maurice; only six of the children reached adulthood. Her mother died before Émilie was four, and her father when she was fourteen. An aunt, Marie-Anne Perrault, raised her and sent her to the boarding school of the Congregation of Notre-Dame, the sisters of St. Marguerite Bourgeoys.

At eighteen she went to keep house for a widowed brother. Santi e Beati tells that she asked no wages, only that a table always be set for any beggar who came to the door. She called it "the King's table" (our translation).

Wife, mother and widow

In 1822 she wrote to a cousin that she felt "a strong vocation . . . for the convent." Yet on June 4, 1823, she married Jean-Baptiste Gamelin, a respected Montreal apple merchant of fifty. The marriage was happy, and her husband shared her love for the poor. It lasted less than five years. Two of their three sons died shortly after birth, Jean-Baptiste died on October 1, 1827, and their last son died the next year.

Her spiritual director gave her a picture of Mary at the foot of the Cross. "I only found consolation in prayer and the contemplation of the Sorrows of Mary," she said. Her charity grew out of that sorrow.

"Providence" for the poor

She joined the Ladies of Charity and visited the poor in their homes. Moved by old women dying alone in squalid rooms, she opened a shelter for them on March 4, 1830, at the corner of Saint-Laurent and Sainte-Catherine streets. It grew from house to house. During the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1834 she nursed the sick despite her fear of the disease. After the rebellion of 1837–1838 she obtained leave to visit the condemned Patriote prisoners and carried messages to their families. People began calling her houses "Providence."

Foundress of the Sisters of Providence

Bishop Ignace Bourget hoped to bring the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul from France to take over her work. When they could not come, he founded a new community instead. Émilie was sent to Emmitsburg, Maryland, to study the Sisters of Charity founded by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, and she brought back a hand-copied rule of St. Vincent. She entered the novitiate herself in October 1843. On March 29, 1844, she and six companions made their vows as the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor, and the next day she was elected superior.

Under Mother Gamelin the sisters took in orphans and elderly women, opened a home for aged priests, ran an employment office, nursed typhus victims among the Irish immigrants of 1847 and opened a cholera hospital in 1849. She also began the care of the mentally ill that led to an asylum at Longue-Pointe.

Death

Cholera returned in 1851. Worn out, Mother Gamelin caught it and died on September 23 after less than twelve hours of illness. Her sisters remembered her last testament: "humility, simplicity, charity, above all charity" (our translation). By then the institute had 51 professed sisters and seven houses.

The miracle and her beatification

Her cause was opened in Montreal's Notre-Dame Basilica on May 31, 1981, and John Paul II declared her Venerable on December 23, 1993. In 1983, Yannick Fréchette, a boy of thirteen, was cured of acute lymphoblastic leukemia through her intercession. Roman physicians judged the cure inexplicable in 1999, and the pope approved it as an approved miracle on December 18, 2000. John Paul II beatified her in St. Peter's Square on October 7, 2001. The Sisters of Providence continue to collect reported favors for her canonization.

Symbols of Blessed Émilie in art

• The black habit and white bonnet: the dress of the early Sisters of Providence, as in her portraits.
• The crucifix on her breast: her religious profession and her love of the Cross.
• Our Lady of Sorrows: often shown near her, for the devotion that carried her through her losses.
• Bread or a set table: "the King's table" and her care for the hungry.

She lived in the age of photography and early prints, so she is shown as she looked, never with an invented symbol.

Feast day and where she is honored

Her feast is September 23. Her tomb is in the chapel of the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Providence in Montreal, where the Émilie Gamelin Center welcomes visitors. A square in downtown Montreal, Place Émilie-Gamelin, bears her name. The Sisters of Providence now serve in Canada, the United States, Latin America, Haiti, Africa and Asia. See others honored in September on our feast days page.

Prayer to Blessed Émilie Gamelin

The Sisters of Providence publish a novena to obtain a favor through her intercession, approved by the Archdiocese of Montreal. The prayer for its first day reads:

Provident God, you whom Emilie came to know early in her life, open our eyes to the light of your presence and, following her example, may the poor always have a place in our lives. Allow us to obtain the favour we are soliciting by her intercession… if it is your holy Will.

Let us ask Blessed Émilie Gamelin to pray for widows and grieving parents, for the elderly poor and the mentally ill, for prisoners and their families, and for all who care for them.