Emily de Vialar

On Christmas night 1832, Émilie de Vialar settled with a few companions in a house near the church of Saint-Pierre in Gaillac: this was the birth of the congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition, dedicated to the care of the poor, the sick, and to education. The taking of the habit took place on March 19, 1833, and the institute was approved by the Archbishop of Albi. The work quickly took on a missionary dimension: in 1835, Émilie accompanied her first nuns to Algeria, where they assisted the sick during a cholera epidemic. Driven by the desire to carry the Gospel far away, she multiplied foundations in Tunisia, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, Syria, and the Holy Land—with a seat established in Jerusalem in 1848—and then as far as Burma and Australia. At her death, there were about forty houses spread across three continents. This growth came at the cost of great difficulties: a conflict with Mgr Dupuch, Bishop of Algiers, led to the expulsion of the sisters from Algeria in 1842, and the foundress had to face poverty and opposition on several occasions.

The spiritual journey of Émilie de Vialar was marked from her youth by a desire to give herself to God in the service of the most destitute, which she first exercised discreetly among the sick of Gaillac. Her religious life was traversed by numerous trials: family opposition, material difficulties, ecclesiastical conflicts, and expulsion from Algeria, which she endured without abandoning her work. In his canonization homily on June 27, 1951, Pius XII praised in the daughters of Émilie de Vialar "their love of poverty, of sacrifice, their inexhaustible charity toward God and neighbor, their strength and maternal tenderness," virtues of which the foundress is the source and model. Her reputation for holiness rests on this constancy in adversity, on her missionary boldness in the service of very diverse populations—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—and on the spirit of evangelical poverty that she imprinted upon her institute. It is this proven fidelity that would open, decades after her death, the path to her official recognition by the Church.

The process for the recognition of the sanctity of Emily de Vialar reached completion in several stages during the 20th century. On March 19, 1935, Pope Pius XI declared her Venerable. She was subsequently beatified on June 18, 1939, under the pontificate of Pius XII. The canonization was pronounced by the same Pope on June 24, 1951, at the same time as that of Maria Domenica Mazzarello; a few days later, on June 27, 1951, Pius XII received the faithful who had come to Rome for the ceremony and delivered a speech celebrating the missionary work of the new saint and her religious sisters. Her liturgical feast is set for August 24, the anniversary of her death; within the congregation, it is more specifically celebrated on June 17. Several sources recall that the definitive diocesan approval of the institute only occurred after the death of the foundress, in 1862, which highlights the long-contested and subsequently fully recognized nature of her work.

The legacy of Émilie de Vialar lies above all in the congregation she founded: the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition, whose missionary momentum did not fade at her death. Established as early as the 19th century from North Africa to the Near East, and as far as Burma and Australia, the religious sisters are today present on all five continents, faithful to the original vocation of caring for the poor, caring for the sick, and education, in the service of populations of all faiths. The memory of Émilie de Vialar is maintained in Gaillac, her hometown, and in Marseille, where she died and is buried. Her canonization by Pius XII in 1951 confirmed her place among the great female figures of the 19th-century Catholic mission, alongside other contemporary foundresses. Her liturgical memorial, celebrated on August 24, extends the spiritual influence of this woman who knew how to make a family inheritance the starting point for an international work.