| Émilie Gamelin | |
|---|---|
Raoul Hunter's statue of Émilie Gamelin |
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| Born | February 19, 1800 Montreal, Quebec |
| Died | September 23, 1851 (aged 51) Montreal, Quebec |
| Other names | Émilie Tavernier Marie-Émilie-Eugène Gamelin Amélie Gamelin |
| Known for | Founding the Sisters of Providence |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
Émilie Gamelin (née Tavernier, February 19, 1800 – September 23, 1851), also known as Marie-Émilie-Eugène Gamelin and Amélie Gamelin, was a Canadian social worker and Roman Catholic nun. She is best known as the founder and first superior of the Sisters of Providence. In 2001 she was beatified by Pope John Paul II.
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Gamelin was born February 19, 1800 in Montreal, the youngest of 15 children of Antoine Tavernier (a carrier) and Marie-Josephte Maurice. Nine of her siblings died before reaching adulthood. Gamelin's mother died in 1804 when Gamelin was aged 4 and her father died in 1814 when Gamelin was aged 14. Consequently Gamelin was raised by her aunt Marie-Anne Tavernier and her husband Joseph Perrault, to whom Gamelin's mother had entrusted Gamelin's care prior to her death. Gamelin shared the Perrault household with Marie-Anne and Joseph's four children.[1]
In 1814 and 1815, Gamelin boarded at the St Jean Baptiste Street School run by the Congregation of Notre Dame,[2] before returning to the Perrault household. In 1818 Gamelin spent time at the household of her brother Francis, whose wife had recently died. When she returned to the Perrault household in 1819, her aunt, now old and infirm, put Gamelin in the care of Agathe (born 1787), Gamelin's aunt's daughter.[1]
Aged 19, Gamelin spent time as a Montreal socialite and was frequently seen at social occasions. Between 1820 and 1822 Gamelin spent two stretches residing in with one of her cousins, Julie Perrault,[1] ending in 1822 when Gamelin's aunt died, resulting in Gamelin and her cousin Agathe Perrault moving together into a house in Montreal West.[3] In a letter to Agathe dated June 18, 1822, Gamelin wrote that she felt "a strong vocation [...] for the convent. [...] I renounce for ever the young dandies and also the [vanities of this] world; I shall become a nun some time in the autumn."[1]
Despite her interest in convent life, on June 4, 1823 Gamelin married Jean-Baptiste Gamelin, a 50-year old bachelor of Montreal who made a living dealing in apples. The marriage lasted five years, ending in Jean-Baptiste's death on October 1, 1827. Gamelin had had three children by the marriage, but two had died shortly after birth and the third died within a year of Jean-Baptiste.[1]
After the death of her husband, Gamelin took an interest in charitable works. In 1827 she became a member of two groups organised by the Society of Saint-Sulpice (also known as the Sulpicians). These groups were the Confrérie du Bien Public, which arranged work for the unemployed, and the Association des Dames de la Charité, a charity aimed at relieving poverty and destitution via home visits and the distribution of alms.[1] In 1828 she also joined the Confrérie de la Sainte-Famille, a group dedicated to the spiritual growth of its members and the spreading of the Roman Catholic faith.[1] For a short period in 1929 she also worked with Agathe-Henriette Huguet-Latour's organisation the Charitable Institution for Female Penitents.[1] While working with these groups, Gamelin gradually divested herself of her financial assets, funnelling the proceeds into the charities she was working with.[1]
In 1829, Gamelin took four frail and sick elderly women into her home on Saint Aintoine Street.[3] By 1830 Gamelin had decided she needed larger premises to care for the women, and on March 4, 1830, she opened a shelter for frail or sick elderly women in Montreal on the corner of Rue Saint-Laurent and Rue Sainte-Catherine, in the Saint Lawrence district near to the homes of many of Gamelin's relatives.[3] The building for the shelter was provided by Claude Fay, the parish priest of Notre-Dame in Montreal.[1] In 1831 the shelter moved to a larger building rented by Gamelin at the corner of Rue Saint-Lawrence and Rue Saint-Philippe.[3] At the time of the move, the new building housed 15 boarders,[1] with a maximum capacity of 20,[3] and also provided a residence for Gamelin.[1] The shelter expanded until in 1836 it again required larger premises. On 14 March 1836 a house on the corner of Rue Sainte-Catherine and Rue Lacroix was donated by Antoine-Olivier Berthelet, a wealthy philanthropist, and shortly thereafter the shelter moved to these new premises.[1]
In March 1838, Gamelin contracted typhoid fever and became seriously ill; however she later recovered.[1] On September 1841, the Legislative Assembly for the Province of Canada incorporated the shelter as the Montreal Asylum for Aged and Infirm Women.[1]
During the years leading up to the Lower Canada Rebellion, Gamelin was a supporter of the Patriot movement. Her brother Francois Tavernier was an ardent supporter of Joseph Papineau and the Patriots, and during the 1832 Montreal West by-election he was arrested and charged with assaulting a supporter of Stanley Bagg, an opposing Tory politician.[4] Gamelin's cousin Joseph Perrault had been elected to the Assembly as a supporter of the Parti Canadien, the forerunner of the Patriots.[4]
In the 1832 by-election for Montreal West, Lower Canada, Gamelin was one of 226 women who sought to vote.[5] She placed her vote for the Patriot candidate Daniel Tracey in preference to his Tory opponent Stanley Bagg.[4]
During the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837 and 1838, Gamelin obtained permission to visit imprisoned rebels who were under sentences of death, and gave them counselling and helped them to contact their families.[1]
In 1841, Ignace Bourget, newly appointed as Bishop of Montreal, travelled to Europe, where he visited France. There, among other business, he attempted to persuade the Filles de la Charité de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, a French charitable brotherhood, to establish a mission in Montreal. He intended for the St Vincent de Paul brothers to take charge of Gamelin's Asylum for Aged and Infirm Women. He announced this intention to Gamelin and her staff on October 16, 1841, shortly after his return from France.[1]
With that plan in mind, on October 27, 1841 the women of Gamelin's shelter elected Gamelin as head of their new corporation, and on November 6, 1841 Gamelin and her staff bought land on a block bounded by Rue Sainte-Catherine, Rue Lacroix, and Rue Mignonne. Plans for a new structure to be known as the Asile de la Providence were commissioned from architect John Ostell, and on December 20, 1841, construction commenced.[1] On February 16, 1842, Gamelin donated the last of her property to the corporation.[1]
However, on November 8, 1842, Bishop Bourget received word that the Filles de la Charité de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul had decided not to pursue a mission to Montreal. Bourget therefore decided to found a new religious community to managage the newly built Asile de la Providence, and put out a call for suitable women to join such an order. By March 25, 1843 seven women had expressed an interest, and they were placed into a novitiate under the direction of Jean-Charles Prince, co-adjutor bishop of Montreal. Gamelin was not one of those women, but Bourget was nevertheless eager to associate her with the project and therefore gave her the position of Superior over the novices. On July 8, 1843, one of the novices withdrew from the program, leaving an opening which Gamelin was intended to take. Prior to entering the novitiate, however, Gamelin was sent by Bourget to the United States to visit and study the Sisters of Charity of St Joseph , a Maryland-based order founded by Elizabeth Seton in 1809, with the aim of obtaining a template for a new religious community. Gamelin returned with a handwritten copy of the rule of St Vincent de Paul, and on October 8, 1843, she took the novice's habit.[1]
On March 29, 1844, a ceremony was held at the chapel of the Asile de la Providence,[6] in which Bourget conferred canonical status on the new religious community and named it the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor (later to become popularly known as the Sisters of Charity of Providence, or Sisters of Providence). At this ceremony, Gamelin and the other six novices became nuns, taking the traditional vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, as well as a fourth vow to serve the poor. At this time Gamelin received the religious name of Mother Gamelin. The following day (March 30, 1844), Gamelin was elected superior of the new order.[1]
From 1844 the sisters provided shelter to orphan girls and elderly women boarders, and in 1845 they launched the Hospice St-Joseph, a hospice dedicated to the care and shelter of sick and elderly priests. Also in 1845 the sisters established an employment office to aid job seekers and prospective employers, and began caring for the mentally ill.[1] In 1846 the sisters opened homes at Longue-Pointe in Montreal and at La Prairie.[1]
In 1847 a typhus epidemic struck Montreal and Bishop Bourget called upon the religious communities of Montreal, including Gamelin and the Sisters of Providence, to aid in the treatment of its victims. Following the epidemic Gamelin assumed responsibility for the Hospice Saint-Jérôme-Émilien, a facility dedicated to the children of Irish immigrant typhus victims.[1] Late in 1847 Gamelin dispatched some of the sisters to teach at the École Saint-Jacques, which was suffering from staff shortages. In 1849, Gamelin established a lazaret (marine quarantine station) to help respond to that year's cholera epidemic.[1]
In 1849 Gamelin successfully petitioned the Attorney-General of Lower Canada, Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine, for permission to open an insane asylum at Longue-Pointe. Also in that year she established a convent at Sainte-Élisabeth, and in 1850 it was joined by a convent at Sorel. Late in 1850 Gamelin visited the United States and toured the establishments of the Sisters of Charity of St Joseph, including their asylums.[1]
On September 23, 1851, Gamelin died of cholera during the cholera epidemic of that year, following an illness that lasted less than 12 hours. She was buried on September 24 in the vault of the Asile de la Providence.[1]
In 1960, research was begun with the intention of founding the cause for Gamelin's possible beatification and canonisation. On May 31, 1981, the research was introduced in the Archdiocese of Montreal, with the result that an inquiry into Gamelin's canonisation was begun, and Gamelin was proclaimed a Servant of God (the first of four steps on the path to Roman Catholic sainthood).[7]
In 1983, an inquiry into Gamelin's canonisation cause was begun by a diocesan tribunal. The evidence heard by the tribunal was compiled into a document called a positio, which was sent to Rome and presented to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. The positio was examined by a committee of expert theologians, and upon their recommendation, Pope John Paull II declared Gamelin to be Venerable (the second of the four stages of sainthood) on December 23, 1993.[7]
Also in 1983, a 13-year-old boy named Yannick Fréchette was observed to make a surprising recovery from leukemia following prayer directed to Émilie Gamelin. The medical file relating to this case was submitted to doctors in Rome, and in 1999 those doctors unanimously declared Fréchette's recovery to be a miracle, attributable to the intercession of Gamelin. The healing was formally acknowledged as an authentic miracle by Pope John Paul II on December 18, 2000. The declaration of a miracle enabled Gamelin to meet the requirements for beatification, the third of the four stages of sainthood, and on October 7, 2001, Pope John Paul II announced Gamelin's beatification. As a result of her beatification, Gamelin received the title "Blessed", and public devotions to her were endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church.[7]
The land in Montreal on which the Asile de la Providence was located was named the Place Émilie-Gamelin after the demolition of the building in the 1960s.
A statue of Gamelin, created in 1999 by artist Raoul Hunter, stands in the Sainte-Catherine St. exit of Berri-UQAM Metro station.