Emilie de Rodat
Holy Emilie de Rodat (born the September 6th 1787 with the castle of Druelle, close to Rodez, Aveyron - died the September 19th 1852 with Villefranche-with-Rouergue) was a French nun of the 19th century, founder of the congregation of the Sœurs of the Holy-Family. Festival on September 19th.
Emilie de Rodat, first child of Jean-Louis de Rodat and Henriette de Pomayrols, was born in a family belonging to the old middle-class rouergate. After the failure of three tests of religious life, it joined her grandmother with Villefranche-with-Rouergue (Aveyron) in a kind of community gathering of former nuns (we are the shortly after the Révolution) and of the pious people.
In 1815, having heard somebody deplore the disappearance of the free schools of the Ursulines, it opens a school in its room where soon forty pupils pile up. She will have several times to emigrate in increasingly vast buildings until she can acquire in 1817 the old convent of the Cordeliers.
It is there that it founds the congregation of the nuns of the Holy Family in 1819. The ones were dedicated to the instruction of the poor girls, the others were going to look after the patients in residence. With its death forty houses had been founded in various countries.
She knew long years, more than twenty years, of suffering morals believing to have lost the faith and the hope, estimating herself rejected. Its entourage never suspected it. It was only in the last years of its life that it recovered interior peace and that God made him feel his friendship again.
She dies the September 19th 1852 with Villefranche-with-Rouergue, and is buried four days later in an oratory of the garden with Notre Dame of Salette, where cures are obtained thanks to its intercession. Pilgrimages take place.
Its body is preserved in the convent of the Holy-Family. Its biography was written by its confessor Pierre-Marie Fabrer, in 1858.
She is béatifiée the June 9th 1940 and is canonized the April 23rd 1950, issued “Holy” by the pope Pie XII.
Streets, in its native area, in particular to Rodez and Villefranche-with-Rouergue bear its name as well as a school to Toulouse and a hearth of young people, street St Martin of the Meadows.
Congregation of the Holy Family
The Congregation of the Holy Family, Pontifical right, sits at Villefranche-of-Rouergue and it is present on all the continents.
One counts 850 nuns today throughout the world.