St. Leonie Aviat: Foundress of the Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales

Who was St. Leonie Aviat?

St. Leonie Aviat was a French nun of the nineteenth century who gave her life to the young working girls of the industrial age. With Fr. Louis Brisson, chaplain of the Visitation convent in Troyes, she founded the Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales in 1866 to welcome the country girls who worked long, poorly paid hours in the city's textile mills. As Mother Frances de Sales she led the congregation for most of her life, carried it through the anti-religious laws in France, and died in exile in Perugia, Italy, in 1914.

Her motto was "To forget myself entirely." We keep her feast on January 10.

The life of St. Leonie Aviat

A schoolgirl of the Visitation

Léonie Aviat was born on September 16, 1844, in Sézanne, in the Champagne country of France. She was sent to school at the Visitation monastery in Troyes, the order founded by St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane Frances de Chantal. Two people shaped her there: the superior, Mother Marie de Sales Chappuis, and the chaplain, Fr. Louis Brisson. When she finished school, she meant to come back to the Visitation as a lay sister. Both of them told her to wait.

The workshop in Sézanne

The sign came in an ordinary place. In her hometown she had to go to a workshop where eyeglasses were made and repaired. The room was full of young girls at work under the watchful, motherly eye of a forewoman, and Léonie felt a strong desire to take that woman's place: to counsel and guide girls like these. The feeling grew stronger when Fr. Brisson showed her the workers' center he had opened in Troyes.

The Oeuvre St. Francis de Sales

Fr. Brisson had opened his center in 1858 for the girls of the textile mills, to give them a complete education, human and Christian. He could not find a stable staff to run it, and he came to believe God wanted a religious congregation for the work. On April 18, 1866, Léonie joined the center with a school friend, Lucie Canuet. On October 30, 1868, she received the habit and the name Sister Frances de Sales. In August 1871 she wrote in her notes:

St. Francis de Sales, you have chosen me to be at the head of this little group; give me your spirit, your heart... Grant me a share of your union with God and of that interior spirit which knows how to do everything in union with Him and nothing without Him.

She made her vows on October 11, 1871, and the next year she was elected superior general.

Superior, teacher and exile

The congregation grew quickly. The sisters opened parish schools, and in Paris Mother Aviat ran their first boarding school for young ladies for eight years. Then came what the Vatican biography calls a period of "effacement": she was set aside from office, and her humility showed. In 1893 she was elected superior general again and held the office until her death, sending sisters to South Africa and Ecuador.

In 1903 the French laws against religious orders closed many of her houses. She kept what she could in France and moved the motherhouse to Perugia, in Italy. In 1911 Pope St. Pius X gave final approval to the congregation's constitutions. She died in Perugia on January 10, 1914. In 1961 her remains were brought back to Troyes.

The miracles of St. Leonie Aviat

• The cure in South Africa (approved). A healing in South Africa through her prayers was approved for her beatification on September 27, 1992.
• The cure of Bernadette McKenzie (approved). Bernadette McKenzie, fifteen years old, of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, where the Oblate Sisters run St. Bernadette School, was cured of a paralyzing spinal disease. This was the miracle approved for her canonization on November 25, 2001.

At the canonization, Pope John Paul II told her sisters that her resolution to "forget oneself completely" is "an appeal to go against the current of egotism and easy pleasures."

Why St. Leonie Aviat is honored by the Salesian family

She is the co-foundress and patron of the Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales, whose name means "offered to God and to the neighbor" by their whole life. The sisters still teach and serve in Europe, Africa and the Americas. The men's congregation Fr. Brisson founded, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, honors her as well. See more patron saints.

Symbols of St. Leonie Aviat in art

Because she lived in the age of photography, she is known mostly from photographs, and her images follow them:

• The black habit and veil of the Oblate Sisters, with a small white collar.
• A crucifix, the sign of the self-offering she called her oblation.
• A book, for the teaching mission of her congregation and the writings of St. Francis de Sales she lived by.

In Sézanne a plaque on her birthplace, a half-timbered house in the town center, recalls her canonization.

Feast day and where St. Leonie Aviat is honored

Her feast is January 10. She is honored in Troyes, where her congregation began and where her remains rest, in her hometown of Sézanne, and in the schools of the Oblate Sisters, among them Mount Aviat Academy in Childs, Maryland. See the feast day calendar.

Prayer and words of St. Leonie Aviat

We have no traditional prayer to her in common use, but her own prayers are the best way to learn her spirit. Pope John Paul II quoted this one at her canonization:

O my God, let my happiness be found in sacrificing my will and my desires for you!

Her sisters treasure many of her sayings, among them this counsel:

Go often to rest your heart near the tabernacle; you will find there the necessary strength and graces to go more surely along the path of fidelity.

Let us ask St. Leonie Aviat to pray for young workers, for teachers and for everyone who serves others without thanks: "St. Leonie Aviat, pray for us."