St. Julie Billiart

Who was St. Julie Billiart?

Marie-Rose-Julie Billiart was born on July 12, 1751, in Cuvilly, a farming village in Picardy, north of Paris. Paralyzed for more than twenty years, she became the founder of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a congregation of teaching sisters that today works on five continents. She died in Namur, Belgium, on April 8, 1816. Pope Pius X beatified her in 1906, and Pope Paul VI canonized her on June 22, 1969.

Everything about her life comes back to one sentence she said over and over: Ah! qu'il est bon le bon Dieu! "Oh, how good is the good God!" She said it from a sickbed, in hiding, on the road and in exile, and her sisters still say it.

The life of St. Julie Billiart

The saint of Cuvilly

As a child Julie knew her catechism by heart, and the Catholic Encyclopedia says she gathered other children to explain it to them. Her parish priest let her make her First Communion at nine. When her family fell on hard times, she worked in the fields with the reapers, and the village began calling her "the saint of Cuvilly."

In 1774 someone fired a pistol at her father. The shock broke her health, and after poor medical treatment in 1782, the Sisters of Notre Dame write, her legs became paralyzed. She would not walk again for twenty-two years. She received Communion daily, prayed four or five hours a day, made lace and linens for the altar, and taught the village children their catechism from her bed.

Revolution and hiding

When the French Revolution came, Julie helped protect priests who refused the government's oath, among them her own parish priest. When revolutionaries surrounded the château where she was staying, she escaped in a hay cart to Compiègne in 1792, and there she lost her power of speech. In Compiègne, the sisters' account says, she had a vision of women gathered around a cross and heard the words: "These are the daughters that I will give you in an Institute, which will be marked by my cross."

In 1794 she was taken to Amiens, where she met a noblewoman, Françoise Blin de Bourdon, who had barely escaped the guillotine. Françoise was at first put off by the speechless invalid, then became her closest friend and partner for life.

The Sisters of Notre Dame

On February 2, 1804, in Amiens, Julie, Françoise and Catherine Duchâtel vowed themselves to God and to the care and education of poor girls. That is the founding day of the Sisters of Notre Dame. Julie did away with the old division between choir sisters and lay sisters, a new idea at the time.

The miracles of St. Julie Billiart

Her cure in 1804 (reported)

Father Enfantin, a priest of the Fathers of the Faith, asked Julie to make a novena to the Sacred Heart for an intention he didn't tell her. On the fifth day, June 1, 1804, the feast of the Sacred Heart, he told her to stand and take a step in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She stood and walked. He told her to keep it quiet, and her sisters found out days later when they saw her coming down the stairs. The cure is reported: it is well attested, but it was not one of the miracles formally examined for her canonization.

From then on she was always on the move. In twelve years she founded fifteen convents and made, by the Catholic Encyclopedia's count, one hundred and twenty journeys. A dispute with a priest in Amiens forced her to leave in 1809, and Namur became the motherhouse. She died there, after three months of illness, with the Magnificat on her lips.

The two approved miracles

The Church's decree of January 30, 1969, published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, recognized two cures as miracles worked through Blessed Julie's intercession. Both are approved:

• Homerus Rhodius, a foreman in Namur and father of ten, fell into a coma from liver and kidney failure in November 1919. He had received the last sacraments when, on November 30, his family laid her relic on him and began a novena. Within hours he improved, and he recovered completely.
• Otacilio Ribeiro, a young newly married farmer in southern Brazil, was taken to the hospital at Campos Novos in September 1950 with a bowel obstruction. The surgeon opened his abdomen, found a hard mass he dared not remove, and closed him up, expecting him to die. A sister nurse hung Julie's picture on the wall, put her relic on him and urged him to pray. The next morning the surgeon found him well. A week later he went home.

Symbols of St. Julie Billiart in art

Julie is shown as a smiling sister in the black habit, white cap and broad white collar of her congregation, often with a crucifix. Look for a schoolgirl at her side, for her work in education, and for a scroll or banner with Ah! qu'il est bon le bon Dieu. Some images show her in a chair or at a sickbed, recalling her years of paralysis.

Feast day and relics

We keep her feast on April 8, the day of her death. See her neighbors on our feast days page. Her relics rest in a reliquary shrine made in Liège in 1906, the year of her beatification, in the convent church of the sisters' motherhouse in Namur, which now houses their heritage center.

Notre Dame schools and teachers around the world look to her as their patroness. See more on our patron saints page.

Prayer to St. Julie Billiart

We don't know of a traditional prayer to St. Julie in the standard prayer books, and we won't invent one under her name. Her own words are the best prayer she left us:

Ah! qu'il est bon le bon Dieu!

Oh, how good is the good God!

Let us ask St. Julie to pray for us when we are sick or held back, for teachers, and for children who have no one to teach them.