St. Marie-Léonie Paradis, Founder of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family

Who was St. Marie-Léonie Paradis?

St. Marie-Léonie Paradis was a French-Canadian religious sister who founded the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, a congregation devoted to the humble service of priests: cooking, laundry, sacristy work and housekeeping in colleges, seminaries and rectories, offered with prayer for their ministry. Many people still search for her as Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis, the title she held from 1984 until Pope Francis canonized her on October 20, 2024. We keep her feast on May 3, the day she died.

When Pope John Paul II beatified her in Montreal, he said he was glad that a beatification was taking place "for the first time in Canada, which was her country." He called her "humble among the humble."

The life of Marie-Léonie Paradis

A child of L'Acadie

She was born Virginie Alodie Paradis on May 12, 1840, at L'Acadie, south of Montreal, and baptized the same day. She was the third of six children of a poor and devout family. At nine she went to board with the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame at Laprairie, where she was confirmed in 1849 and made her First Communion the next year.

A Marianite sister of Holy Cross

On February 21, 1854, at only thirteen, she entered the convent of the Marianite Sisters of Holy Cross at Saint-Laurent, near Montreal. She received the habit on February 19, 1855, and in spite of poor health she made her profession on August 22, 1857, in the presence of Blessed Basil Moreau, the founder of Holy Cross. She took the name Marie-de-Sainte-Léonie.

She taught in several convents in Canada and then, from 1862, spent eight years at a convent in New York. Pope John Paul II spoke of the "trials of community life" she met there and in Indiana, and said she never took back her gift of herself to God. In 1870, with the approval of her spiritual director and superior, she joined the Indiana province of the sisters, which had separated from the Marianites the year before.

The Little Sisters of the Holy Family

In 1874 she was sent to St. Joseph's College at Memramcook, New Brunswick, a college of the Holy Cross Fathers. There "Sister Léonie," as people called her, drew a little group of young women who wanted to give their lives to God. With the guidance of Father Camille Lefebvre, the Holy Cross provincial, her own deepest wish took shape: to serve priests in their ministry.

The young women received a common habit on August 26, 1877, and the new institute of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family was born officially on May 13, 1880, with the blessing of the general chapter of Holy Cross. She often prayed, "Lord, show me your ways," as Pope John Paul II recalled, and she found God's will in the ordinary manual work of the Holy Family at Nazareth.

In 1895 she moved with the first sisters to Sherbrooke, Quebec, where Bishop Paul LaRoque welcomed them, and the house there became the motherhouse. Pope Pius X released her from her obligations to her first congregation, and on May 1, 1905, she took the habit of her own institute for good.

Her death

Sick in the lungs for years and suffering from cancer, Mother Marie-Léonie died at Sherbrooke on May 3, 1912, nine days before her seventy-second birthday, on the same day she received permission to print the Little Rule for her sisters, which she had waited twenty years to see. By then her congregation had more than forty houses and 635 sisters in Canada and the United States.

At her public funeral in Sherbrooke cathedral, Bishop LaRoque said of her (our translation from the Dicastery's Italian): "She always had open arms and her heart in the right place, a good and honest smile on her lips, welcoming each person as if they were God himself. She was all heart."

The miracles of St. Marie-Léonie Paradis

• Approved, for her beatification: the healing of a religious sister from pulmonary tuberculosis in 1912. The medical board of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints judged it unanimously "not naturally explicable" in 1983, and the decree was promulgated on February 17, 1984.
• Approved, for her canonization: the healing in 1986 of a newborn girl from prolonged asphyxia at birth and failure of several organs. The diocesan inquiry was held in Montreal in 2016, the medical board agreed unanimously in 2021, and Pope Francis authorized the decree on January 24, 2024.

Symbols of St. Marie-Léonie Paradis in art

She lived in the age of photography, so most images of her follow the photographs her sisters kept:

• The black habit with the wide white starched collar and black veil of her congregation;
• A crucifix on her breast and a long rosary at her belt;
• The book of her Rule, the Little Rule she saw approved on the day she died;
• Sometimes an apron, bread or a kitchen, for the humble work of serving priests.

Feast day, tomb and prayer

We keep the feast of St. Marie-Léonie Paradis on May 3, especially in Canada and among the Little Sisters of the Holy Family. See the feast day calendar.

Her body was buried first in the Saint-Michel parish cemetery in Sherbrooke, moved to the motherhouse of her congregation in 1935, and brought in 2017 to the Basilica-Cathedral of Saint-Michel, where pilgrims pray at her tomb.

We know of no traditional prayer to her that we can quote. Let us ask St. Marie-Léonie to pray for priests and seminarians, for all who serve quietly behind the scenes in parishes and schools, and for the grace to find God in ordinary work, as she did. St. Marie-Léonie Paradis, pray for us.