Marie Louise Trichet - Meeting Louis de Montfort

Meeting Louis De Montfort

As she was growing up, Marie Louis and her sister Elizabeth would attend daily mass at the Poitiers Cathedral. One day, after hearing Montfort's sermon, Elizabeth reportedly commented "that preacher is a saint" and suggested that they go to confession to him. Upon entering the confessional, he reportedly asked her: "Who sent you to me?" and she started to reply that her sister had suggested it. "No. it was the Blessed Virgin who sent you to me" was Montfort's quick interruption.

Later, when she confided in Montfort that she wished for a religious life of devotion, Montfort's direction was: "go and live in the hospital". Marie-Louise obeyed and offered her free services to the hospital. Given that there was no official position for a governor at the hospital, despite her family background and education, she volunteered to enter the hospital "as an inmate".

The parents of Marie Louis were not pleased with her decision to enter the hospital as an inmate and her mother reportedly told her: "You will become as mad as that priest". But on February 2, 1703, Marie Louis left her family, consecrated herself to God and received a religious habit from Montfort.

That was the beginning of a four decade effort during which she nursed the sick; gave food to beggars and administered the great maritime hospital of France. The poor people of the Hospital of Niort in Deux-Sèvres eventually came to call her "good Mother Jesus".

Frustrated with the local bishops, Montfort set off to make a pilgrimage to Rome, to ask Pope Clement XI, what he should do. The Pope recognised his real vocation and, telling him that there was plenty of scope for its exercise in France, sent him back with the title of Apostolic Missionary. Thus Montfort left Poitiers and for several years he travelled on foot, preaching missions from Brittany to Nantes. His reputation as a missioner grew, and he became known as "the good Father from Montfort".