Saint Julie Billiart

Saint Julie Billiart was a French catechist who, despite many years of paralysis, taught children the truths of the faith and founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, established for the education of poor girls. The Church commemorates her on April 8, the anniversary of her death.

She was born on July 12, 1751, in Cuvilly, a village in Picardy. As a seven-year-old girl she knew the catechism by heart and explained it to children her own age. When she was sixteen, the family fell into poverty, and Julie worked in the fields at harvest time to help her parents.

She was twenty-two when an unknown assailant fired a shot at her father. The shock she suffered then set off an illness that in the following years took away the use of her legs. For twenty-two years Julie could not walk. She spent many hours in prayer and taught the catechism to the village children who gathered at her bedside.

During the French Revolution she was accused of hiding priests who had refused the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and she had to flee. According to the congregation’s account, she was taken to Compiègne hidden in a hay cart, and it was there that she saw in a vision a cross and women standing around it, who were one day to become her spiritual daughters. In 1794 she found refuge in Amiens. There she met the viscountess Françoise Blin de Bourdon, from then on her friend and closest co-worker.

It was Father Varin, superior of the Fathers of the Faith, who encouraged her to found a congregation. In 1803 Julie began a common life in Amiens with her first companions and took orphaned girls into her care. On February 2, 1804, together with Françoise Blin de Bourdon and Catherine Duchâtel, she vowed chastity and dedicated herself to the education of girls. The sisters regard this day as the beginning of the congregation. A few months later, on June 1, 1804, during a novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Father Enfantin told her to stand up and take a step. Julie obeyed and regained the use of her legs.

From then on she traveled a great deal, founding houses of sisters and schools for poor girls in France and in what is now Belgium. In Amiens, however, Father de Sambucy tried to change the congregation’s rule and turned the local bishop against Julie. In 1809 she had to leave the diocese. Almost all the sisters followed her to Namur, where the bishop of that city received them, and from it the congregation took its name. In conversation and in her letters Julie kept repeating: “Ah, qu’il est bon, le bon Dieu!” that is, “Ah, how good is the good God!”

She died in Namur on April 8, 1816. Pius X beatified her on May 13, 1906, and Paul VI canonized her on June 22, 1969. In his homily he pointed to what best defines her work: religious instruction and the Christian education of girls, especially the poor. The Roman Martyrology also recalls that she zealously spread devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.