OULTREMONT, EMILIE de. - In religion, Maria di Gesù, foundress of the Society of Maria Riparatrice, b. at the castle of Wégimont (Liège) on 11 Oct. 1818, d. at Florence on 22 Feb. 1878.
After a childhood centred on Eucharistic practice, at the age of 19 she married Baron Vittore di Hooghworst, by whom she had two sons and two daughters. Widowed in 1847, she conceived the plan, made clear to her by a revelation of Maria
(8 Dec. 1854), of founding a religious congregation that «would have for her divine Son a most special tenderness and respect». Thus the new Society of Maria Riparatrice arose in Paris on 11 Oct. 1855, with four companions who joined the foundress, and with daytime and partly nighttime adoration. The Institute soon flourished in vocations, including the foundress’s two daughters; and, after the Paris community had been transferred to Strasbourg (1857), foundations began: Missione del Madure (1859), Toulouse (1860), London (1862), Tournai (1863), St-Dénis 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). As superior general, O. did not cease to urge the interior formation of her daughters, herself enlightened and tested also by extraordinary phenomena. The Society was approved on 27 June 1864, and the Constitutions on 15 March 1873.