St. Marie Leonie Paradis

A Life of Hidden Service

Alodie Virginie Paradis was born on May 12, 1840, in L’Acadie, Quebec, the third of six children. At the age of fourteen, she entered the Marianite Sisters of Holy Cross in Saint-Laurent, Montreal, taking the religious name Sister Marie of Sainte Leonie. She spent her early years teaching in several locations around Montreal before being sent, in 1862, to St. Vincent de Paul’s orphanage in New York City, where she served for eight years.

In 1870, she moved to Indiana to teach French and needlework in the Holy Cross novitiate, and then briefly to Lake Linden, Michigan. In 1874, she was called to Memramcook, New Brunswick, to direct a team of novices and postulants at St. Joseph’s College run by the Holy Cross Fathers. It was there that she discerned a new calling: to found a community of women religious dedicated entirely to the domestic service of priests and seminaries.

On May 31, 1880, the Little Sisters of the Holy Family was formally recognized. Mother Marie Leonie envisioned her sisters as living the spirit of the Holy Family of Nazareth, serving the Church through humble, hidden work. The community grew steadily, and in 1895 the motherhouse and novitiate moved to Sherbrooke, Quebec, under the patronage of Bishop Paul LaRocque, who approved the Institute on January 26, 1896.

Mother Marie Leonie died on May 3, 1912, at the age of seventy two in Sherbrooke. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on September 11, 1984, during his pastoral visit to Canada. On October 20, 2024, Pope Francis canonized her at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Today, the Little Sisters of the Holy Family serve in over two hundred institutions across Canada, the United States, Italy, Brazil, Haiti, Chile, Honduras, and Guatemala.

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