Mary Magdalene Postel (1765–1846)

Biography

When she grew up, her ideal was to teach girls who could not afford school because she wanted to re-Christianize France by training women. During the Revolution she became the “virgin priest,” as she was then called, because she was authorized to distribute communion, hid sacred vessels, facilitated places of clandestine worship, sheltered fugitive priests, and continued teaching catechism in caves and granaries. In 1805 she founded the Sisters of the Christian Schools of Mercy in Cherbourg, a congregation for which she acquired the abbey of Saint-Sauveur-le Vicomte years later, and governed her order with very spiritual criteria and at the same time with great maternal tenderness. Sister Mary Magdalene, who at her death had founded thirty-seven houses, was a strong and humble woman convinced that she was a poor instrument of God with whom He could do wonders.