Eugénie Smet

Born at Lille in 1825 into a merchant family, she wanted very young to give her life to prayer for the dead, a devotion then widespread and which no congregation carried as its proper end. Arriving in Paris in 1856 without money or backing, she founded that same year, under the name of Marie de la Providence, the Helpers of the Holy Souls, on a simple idea: to pray for the dead and, meanwhile, to serve the living — visiting the poor, running clubs, nursing at home in the working districts. The Curé of Ars encouraged her. As early as 1867 she sent six sisters to China at a missionary’s request, chosen from the thirty who had volunteered. She died of cancer in 1871, aged forty-five, in the aftermath of the siege of Paris, having refused to leave the city. Beatified in 1957 by Pius XII.