MARIA MADDALENA POSTEL, saint. - Giulia Francesca Caterina Postel, foundress of the Sisters of the Christian Schools and of Mercy, b. at Barfleur (La Manche) on 28 Nov. 1756, d. at St-Sauveur-le-Vicomte (diocese of Coutences) on 16 July 1864.
She devoted herself to the service of God and neighbour from her first Communion onward, and soon opened a kind of boarding school for poor girls and orphans. Amid the turmoil of the Revolution she became, in place of the parish priest, the “Virgin Priest,” keeping the Blessed Sacrament in her house, preparing children for their first Communion, instructing them in the catechism, comforting the dying, and bringing them Viaticum. At the age of forty-nine (1805) she opened a school at Cherbourg; two years later, on 8 Sept. 1807, with four companions, she pronounced her first religious vows and began her new Institute, which was to represent the female branch of the Fratelli delle Scuole cristiane, whose rules were adopted with suitable adaptations. At first the foundation advanced only with difficulty and found itself in desperate circumstances; but it soon recovered, recruits increased, and the ancient ruined abbey of St-Sauveur-le-Vicomte was purchased, becoming the mother house from 1832. The following fine maxim is M. M.’s: “A teaching sister must save at least a thousand souls during her career: one third through her pupils and two thirds through the influence of pious daughters upon their parents.” At her death she left thirty-two houses.
She was beatified on 7 May 1908 and canonized on 24 May 1925. Feast: 17 July.