LAMOUROUS, MARIE-THÉRÈSE-CHARLOTTE de. — Born in Barsac (France) on 1 November 1754, died on 14 September 1836. Already during the French Revolution she had the opportunity to display her zeal by, so to speak, taking the place of the parish priest in the place where she had withdrawn, instructing and guiding the faithful in practices of piety. But her work of greatest merit, after escaping judgment by a revolutionary tribunal, was the foundation, in Bordeaux (1801), of « La Miséricorde » (Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy), an institute for the moral and civic re-education of wayward young women, in which thousands of souls found salvation. In 1923 the cause of beatification of L. was introduced.
BIBL.: M. Pouget, Vie de Mlle de L., Bordeaux 1857, 3rd ed. there 1888; A. Giraudin, M.-T.-C. de L., fondatrice de la Miséricorde de Bordeaux, there 1912; J. Balde, Les Dames de la Miséricorde, Paris 1932. Eugenio Scherrer