About St. Emily

St. Emily de Rodat (1787-1852)

Marie Guillemette Emilie de Rodat was born in 1787 near the city of Rodez in the south of France. At the age of 18, she began teaching in the school of Maison Saint-Cyr in Villefranche. After she had been teaching there for 10 years she became aware of the difficulty poorer families had in obtaining an education for their children. Emily responded by offering free lessons in her own room at the Maison Saint-Cyr. Almost immediately she had 40 pupils and found three young women to assist her in teaching.

Emily and these three other teachers were the beginning of what would become the Congregation of the Holy Family. There was some opposition, but they had the support of the Abbe Marty, spiritual director of the nuns at Maison Saint-Cyr. Emily's room begin too small for the number of children coming to be taught, Emily rented her own rooms and, in May 1816, officially started her free school.

Emily was only gone from the Maison Saint-Cyr for less than eighteen months, however. The religious community there was in the process of breaking up, and in 1817 Emily returned to take possession of the house. In the meantime, she had taken religious vows, and was joined by eight other sisters. The nine women undertook the education of 100 pupils.

Two years later, Sister Emily was preparing to buy new buildings for the Congregation and its school. However, the Congregation was plagued by a series of deaths due to an illness that physicians found themselves unable to diagnose or treat. Sister Emily thought this was perhaps a sign that she should not found a separate Congregation and considered uniting her community with the newly established Daughters of Mary. However, the Villefranche sisters refused any mother superior but Emily, and they proceeded with the formation of the community and the installation of the new buildings.

In the years to follow, the sisters at Villefranche undertook a number of ministries in addition to their school. They visited prisons and opened a rescue home for women, a place of retirement for aged religious, a novitiate house and an orphanage. In addition to these public ministries, a number of cloistered convents were formed. Mother Emily considered the balance between sisters undertaking public ministry and those devoted solely to the contemplative life to be very important, modeling these two branches of the community on the example of Martha and Mary.

In April of 1852 Mother Emily began to suffer from cancer. She resigned the leadership of the congregation and her active ministry, continuing to pray and to guide and encourage the sisters. Her feast day is September 19, the day on which she died in 1852.