Blessed Catherine of Saint Augustine is listed as one of the ‘six founders’ of the Church in Canada, and I will offer the other six when I find out who they might be.  Saint Franҫois de Laval, whose feast we celebrated a couple of days ago on May 6th, must surely be one of them, the first episcopus of the vast diocese of ‘Quebec’ (even more extensive than Quebec is now).

Catherine de Simon de Longpré, as she was born in Normandy, France, chose her vocation decisively and early, as should ideally be the case:  Giving her life to God at the tender age of 16 (then, a more mature age than now, when the devotion of most 16 year-olds tends more to FaceBook and SnapChat than to missionary orders), she joined the Canonesses of Saint Augustine of the Mercy of Jesus, choosing the name of the great bishop of Hippo as her name in religion.

Her order was the first to send consecrated female religious to the far-off and austere colony of Canada, and she arrived here in 1648 in the midst of political and cultural turmoil, a year before the great saints Jean de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant met their horrific end at the hands of the Iroquois in Midland, 800 miles to the west. Sister Catherine devoted her life to the colonists and natives, with concentrated effort learning the latter’s language, offering up prayers and penances for her spiritual work. She fell gravely ill upon her arrival, and her cure at the intercession of the Blessed Virgin she considered miraculous.

Sister Catherine was one of the founders of Hotel-Dieu hospital, still going strong, technologically more advanced, but apostolically and spiritually not quite what it once was. She was always of cheerful and hopeful disposition, even in the most trying of circumstances, and went to her eternal reward on this day in 1668 at the still-tender age of 36 at the hospital she had helped found, universally venerated as a saint, beatified by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1989.

Santa Catherina, ora pro nobis, that in this sesquicentennial year of her founding, Canada may discover what she was once was, and may yet be again.