St. Marguerite d’Youville (1701-1771)

Educated by the Ursulines in Quebec, she returned home at age 13 to help her mother raise her younger siblings, and to teach them what she’d learned. After the famiy moved to Montreal,. Marguerite married François de Youville, and the couple lived with his mother. François proved to be a negligent, adulterous bootlegger. Marguerite was mother of six children, four of whom died in infancy; both surviving sons became priests. Widowed in 1730 at age 28, she opened small store. With the help of Father Louis Normant du Faradon and three like-minded women, she founded the Sisters of Charity of the General Hospital of Montreal (Grey Nuns) on 31 December 1737; the congregation received diocesan approval in 1755. She and her sisters took over operation of the failing and decrepit General Hospital in Montreal on 7 October 1747; Marguerite lived in the hospital the rest of her life, served as its director, and through the work of the sisters it became a success and beacon to outcasts. Today the sisters work throughout Canada, the United States, Africa, and South America. She was canonized in 1990).
(From Saints.sqpn.com)