**MARIA MADDALENA POSTEL, Saint.** – Giulia Francesca Caterina Postel, foundress of the Sisters of the Christian Schools and of Mercy, born at Barfleur (La Manche) on 28 November 1756, died at Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte (diocese of Coutances) on 16 July 1846.
She dedicated herself to the service of God and neighbour from the time of her First Communion and soon opened a kind of boarding school for poor girls and orphans. During the storm of the Revolution, she became, in place of the parish priest, the “Virgin Priest,” keeping the Blessed Sacrament in her home, preparing children for First Communion, instructing them in 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 September 1807, with four companions she made her first religious vows and began her new Institute, which was to represent the female branch of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, adopting and adapting their rules. At first the foundation struggled and found itself in desperate straits; but soon it recovered, recruits increased, and the ruined old abbey of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte was purchased, which from 1832 became the motherhouse. It was Maria Maddalena who coined the fine maxim: “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 the pious daughters upon their parents.” At her death she left thirty-two houses.
---
**MARIA MICHELA OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT, Saint.** – Michela Des Maisières Lopez di Dicastillo, Viscountess of Jorbalán, foundress of the Handmaids of the Blessed Sacrament and of Charity, born at Madrid on 19 January 1809, died at Valencia on 24 August 1865.
She distinguished herself from early childhood and still more in her youth, even during the years she spent with her brother, the ambassador, in Paris and Brussels, especially in works of charity towards girls at risk or fallen into vice, for whom in 1845 she founded in Madrid a “College” where they might be reclaimed before God and society. To render this work permanent she resolved to found a new Congregation that would care for it and at the same time practise perpetual adoration. The Institute was begun on 6 January 1859 and she directed it until her death. The work soon flourished, and when she died seven houses had already been established, which she called the “Seven Sorrows of the Madonna.” The cause of her death was the epidemic that broke out in the Valencia house, whither she hastened to nurse her stricken sisters and where she herself was infected two days after her arrival.
She was beatified on 7 June 1925 and canonized on 4 March 1934. Feast day: 14 August.