Oultremont, Émilie de

OULTREMONT, Émilie de. - In religion, Marie de Jésus, foundress of the Society of Mary Reparatrix, b. at the castle of Wégimont (Liège) on 11 Oct. 1818, d. at Florence on 22 Feb. 1878.

After a childhood centered on the practice of the Eucharist, at the age of 19 she married Baron Victor de Hooghworst, by whom she had two sons and two daughters. Widowed in 1847, she conceived the design, made clear to her by a revelation of Mary

(8 Dec. 1854), of founding a religious congregation that "should have for its divine Son a most special tenderness and respect." And so the new Society of Mary Reparatrix arose in Paris on 11 Oct. 1855, with 4 companions who joined the foundress, and with daytime and partly nighttime adoration. The Institute soon flourished with vocations, among them the two daughters of the foundress, and, the Paris community having been transferred to Strasbourg (1857), the foundations began: Mission of the Madura (1859), Toulouse (1860), London (1862), Tournai (1863), St-Denis on the island of Réunion (1863), Rome (1865), Port Louis (1866), Liège (1866), Paris (1869), Nantes and Le Mans (1871), Brussels (1872), Pau and Seville (1874), Cordoba (1875). The O. did not cease, as superior general, from vigorously stimulating the interior formation of her daughters, enlightened and tried also by extraordinary phenomena. The Society was approved on 27 June 1864, the Constitutions on 15 March 1873.