Viel, Placida, Blessed

VIEL, Placida, Blessed. - In the world Eulalia Vittoria, b. at Quettehou (diocese of Coutances) on 26 Sept. 1805, d. at St-Sauveur-le-Comte on 4 March 1877.

Her life spent in the family, wholly permeated with piety, and her habit of gathering her contemporaries around her to instruct them in the catechism and educate them to good, as they earned her the title of "little saint" and of "good Vittoria," so they prepared her very early for the religious life, which she embraced at the age of 16, in 1833, entering the recent Congregation of the Sisters of the Christian Schools of Mercy. Such did she prove herself during her novitiate and in her first years of formation that the foundress, St. Mary Magdalene Postel, on the very day of her profession, 21 Sept. 1838, chose her as her counsellor and as mistress of novices. In 1846 she succeeded the foundress in the office of mother general. The numerous and long journeys undertaken in various nations of Europe, both to collect alms for the construction of the mother house and to make her Institute known, brought about a fine flowering of new houses and of vocations. But above all she devoted herself to the formation of her religious, who saw in her the most perfect personification of the Rule and of charity toward childhood and the most underprivileged neighbour.

She was beatified by Pius XII on 6 May 1951.

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