Blessed Emilie Gamelin

Mother of Providence

Emilie Tavernier was born on February 19, 1800, in Montreal, Quebec, the youngest of fifteen children of Antoine Tavernier and Marie-Josephte Maurice. Only six of the children survived to adulthood. Emilie lost her mother before the age of four and her father at fourteen, leaving her an orphan whose own suffering would shape a life of profound compassion for the abandoned and the poor.

On June 4, 1823, she married Jean-Baptiste Gamelin, a respected Montreal citizen who shared her devotion to charity. Their happiness was tragically brief. All three of their sons died in infancy, and her husband passed away on October 1, 1827, leaving Emilie a widow at twenty seven. On the advice of her confessor, she turned her grief into service, beginning to visit and care for the elderly, the sick, and the destitute of Montreal.

In 1841, she opened the Providence Shelter for elderly women and orphans. On March 25, 1843, at the invitation of Bishop Ignace Bourget of Montreal, she co-founded the Sisters of Providence. Emilie and six novices took their religious vows in 1844, and she became the first Superior of the Congregation at the age of forty four. The community expanded rapidly, opening shelters, schools, an employment office, a hospice for elderly priests, and pioneering care for persons with mental illness and hearing impairments.

During the devastating typhus epidemic of 1847, Mother Gamelin and her sisters received over 650 orphaned children. Her final years were marked by tireless charity and deep trust in Divine Providence. She died of cholera on September 23, 1851, at the age of fifty one. Her last words to her sisters were a final testament: “Humility, simplicity, charity, above all charity.” She was declared Venerable in 1993 and beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 7, 2001.

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