The Good Shepherd Sisters of Quebec
The Foundress, Marie-Josepthe Fitzbach
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Baptismal certificate of Marie Fitzbach |
Marie-Josephte Fitzbach was born in Saint-Vallier, Bellechasse County, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, on October 16, 1806. She was the daughter of Charles Fitzbach (1736-1808), a former soldier born in Luxembourg, and Geneviève Nadeau (1774-1852), born in Berthier, also on the south shore.
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Marie was not yet two when her father died, and her family was reduced to very modest means. When she was 13, she left the Côte-du-Sud (south shore) to find work in Quebec City. At age 16, she was employed by François-Xavier Roy, a prosperous merchant who held shop on rue de la Fabrique. Following the premature death of his first wife, he proposed to Marie and they were married on April 17, 1828. After five years of marriage and the birth of three daughters, Marie was widowed. She provided for the needs of her daughters and saw to their education by becoming a housekeeper at the rectory of Saint-Gervais in Bellechasse County. |
Home of Marie Fitzbach-Roy |
In 1849, when she was 43, Marie-Josephte Fitzbach, a woman of great faith who had always aspired to religious life, became a lay resident at the Hospice of the Sisters of Charity of Quebec and thus joined her two daughters who had recently become postulants there. A few months after her arrival, Marie was asked to direct a house for the rehabilitation of women released from jail. This project was the idea of George Manly Muir, a lawyer and high-ranking civil servant with the Assemblée Législative du Quebec (Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, now Quebec). As well, he was a militant Catholic and an active member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. |
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Mr. Muir visiting inmates |
On January 12, 1850, Marie Fitzbach and Mary Keogh, a young Irish woman, opened the Asile de Sainte-Madeleine (Saint Magdalen’s Refuge) on rue Richelieu in Quebec City’s Saint-Jean-Baptiste Sector. The following October, the shelter moved to a larger building on the corner of rues De La Chevrotière and Saint-Amable in the Saint-Louis Sector. The work and influence of the Good Shepherd Sisters of Quebec radiated from this initial place.
In 1851, convinced that education must complement the rehabilitation work of the Good Shepherd, Marie Fitzbach opened two classes, one taught in French and the other in English.
In 1856, six years after the first shelter was opened, Marie-Josephte-Fitzbach, along with some young women who had come to help her, formed a religious congregation called the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Refuge of Sinners. Today they are known as Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary or Good Shepherd Sisters of Quebec.
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And so, at the age of 49, Marie-Josephte Fitzbach took the name of Mother Mary of the Sacred Heart. The Foundress was elected as the first superior of the group. Though she abandoned this responsibility in 1859, she remained an active and venerated member of the Congregation. The last years of her life were spent in solitude and prayer. She died peacefully on September 1st, 1885, at the Mother House on rue De La Chevrotière. She was 79 years old. Since 1985, canonical procedures for the beatification of Marie-Josephte Fitzbach have been undertaken in Rome by the Good Shepherd Sisters of Quebec. |
Portrait of Mother Mary of the |
