### EMILIE DE VIA, ST., THE
Foundress of the Institute of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition, born at Gaillac (diocese of Albi) on 12 Sept. 1797, died at Marseilles on 24 Aug. 1856.
Educated piously by her mother, after the latter’s death she was entrusted for a short time to the Sisters of Our Lady, then recalled to help in the running of the household and the education of her little brother. After overcoming family difficulties and receiving a substantial inheritance from her paternal grandfather, she was able to follow her ardent desire for religious life. Having bought and restored a fine house at Gaillac, she immediately gathered around her other generous young women, thus laying in 1833 the foundations of her new Institute, to which she wished to add the title “of the Apparition,” so that the sisters might recall the angel who had revealed to St Joseph the mystery of the Incarnation. The sisters soon began to bring every kind of relief to the poor and the sick, even in their homes, and to direct young girls toward piety and learning, awaiting some new field of mission.
This opened for them in 1835, when the foundress, accompanied by some sisters, went to Algeria, where the cholera soon brought their heroism to the fore and provoked numerous conversions, even among Muslims. Yet contradictions arose, and the religious authority went so far as to expel them. Returning to Gaillac, she was soon able to transfer the motherhouse to Marseilles, after a brief stop in Toulouse. She presided over the Institute for 24 years, governing it with care and spreading it widely, so that at her death she left 42 houses, scattered across Europe and beyond.
She was beatified by Pius XII on 18 June 1939 and canonized on 24 June 1951.
### VIA MARE ADRIATICUM
A devotional practice in honour of the Sorrowful Virgin, which, like the Way of the Cross, meditates upon the sorrows that the Blessed Virgin suffered in her life, in seven stations corresponding to the seven sorrows that medieval tradition has consecrated as the principal ones: the prophecy of Simeon in the Temple, the flight into Egypt, the loss of Jesus in the Temple, the meeting with Jesus on the way to Calvary, the crucifixion of Jesus, the deposition from the Cross, and the burial of Jesus.
This pious practice, already known in 1450, spread especially toward the end of the 17th century, particularly in Spain and among the Slavic peoples. From 1836 it began to be practised in the church of S. Marcello al Corso in Rome. On 13 July 1837, Gregory XVI approved and granted indulgences for II. The indulgences were later extended by Leo XIII (23 July 1898) and by Bl. Pius X (14 Apr. 1913). In 1937, under the name of the “Perpetual Novena,” this practice assumed extraordinary proportions in the church of the Sorrowful Mother of the Servites in Chicago, where it had to be repeated 38 times in a single day, with an attendance of 78,000 people. At present this novena is established in more than 161 dioceses and is practised in more than 1,300 churches. The Sacred Penitentiary extended (4 July 1946) to the Via Mare Adriaticum the concessions granted to the Way of the Cross regarding the manner of practising it; on 24 Apr. 1951 it granted a plenary indulgence.