You can’t tell the story of St. Léonie Aviat without also mentioning St. Francis de Sales. He had a profound influence on this young French girl. Léonie was born in Sézanne, France in 1844. At the young age of 11, her family sent her as a boarding student to the Monastery of the Visitation in Troyes. It was here that she became a spiritual daughter of St. Francis de Sales.
Léonie came of age during the Industrial Revolution when many women were leaving farms and villages to work in the textile mills at Troyes. Matthew Bunson writes in “John Paul II’s Book of Saints” that Léonie saw the problems of these French working girls who were being exploited and endangered by many in society.
At the Visitation School, Mother Marie de Sales Chappuis and Father Louis Brisson were already at work with these girls. In 1858, Fr. Brisson had opened a center where young girls working in the mills could socialize in a safe environment. Sarah Gallick writes in “The Big Book of Women Saints” that he called it the St. Francis de Sales Project. When he needed a manager, Léonie was recommended to him. She threw herself into the project vowing to be a “worker among the workers” according to Gallick.
As the club expanded, Fr. Brisson decided to establish a religious congregation to direct this work. At the age of 22, Léonie, together with Mother Chappuis and Fr. Brisson co-founded the new congregation of the Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales. Léonie took her vows in 1871 and a new religious name, Françoise de Sales, although she is still best known by her baptismal name of Léonie. Editor Bernard Bangley writes in “Butler’s Lives of the Saints” that the congregation was committed to Salesian spirituality and the evangelization and education of young textile workers. Sister Françoise de Sales worked for the happiness of others and was faithful to her resolution “to forget myself entirely.”
Léonie became the first Superior General of the congregation. The community grew and girls’ schools were opened in Paris. Together with Fr. Brisson, she established worker hostels all over Europe and founded missions and schools in South Africa and South America. The Sisters also conducted retreats as part of their apostolate.
Bunson writes that Léonie (Françoise de Sales) had to leave France in 1903 because of anti-religious legislation. She started again in Perugia, Italy, and directed her sisters from there. She drafted the congregation’s constitution and Pope St. Pius X approved it in 1911. Sister Françoise de Sales died in Perugia on January 10, 1914. Bunson describes her as “one of those hidden souls in Christ’s love.” Gallick writes that Léonie lived according to her own maxim that one must “do everything with God and nothing without him.”
She was beatified in 1992 by Pope John Paul II and canonized by him in 2001. The Oblate Sisters arrived in the United States in 1952 and they work today in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. They live a life of Salesian spirituality with humility before God and gentleness towards the neighbor. (
https://cmswr.org/community/oblate-sisters-of-st-francis-de-sales)
Mary Lou Gibson writes about the saints for the West Texas Angelus
from her home in Austin.