Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis was born Virginie-Alodie Paradis in L’Acadie, Que., in 1840. The future saint entered the convent of the Marianites of Holy Cross, a congregation of women dedicated to assisting priests of the Congregation of Holy Cross both through teaching and by cooking and cleaning for the priests. Given the religious name Marie de Sainte-Léonie, she had various teaching assignments in Canada before being sent to teach at St. Vincent’s orphanage in New York.
In 1880 in Memramcook, N.B., she founded a new community, the Institute of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, to support the ministry of priests. With 91 sisters, the community was approved in 1896 in Sherbrooke, Que. The sisters’ website describes their mission as “the spiritual and material support of the ministry of priests.”
Mother Marie-Léonie died in 1912 in Sherbrooke at the age of 72.
Today her sisters work in over 200 institutions of education and evangelization in Canada, the United States, Italy, Brazil, Haiti, Chile, Honduras, and Guatemala.
She was beatified in Montreal on Sept. 11, 1984, by St. John Paul II, during his visit to Canada.
The others Pope Francis is scheduled to declare saints include Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, founder of the Consolata Missionaries; eight Franciscan friars and three Maronite laymen who were martyred in Syria in 1860; and Blessed Elena Guerra, an Italian nun who founded the Oblates of the Holy Spirit.