Wednesday, September 23, 2026

It is the 23^rd of September 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I'm your guest host, Sam Leanza Ortiz.

 

Today, our story takes us to the Great White North for some Canadian history, as we look at the moving story of Émilie Tavernier-Gamelin. We’re glad to have some Canadian history on the show, but I must apologize to any Canadian listeners out there: the Church in Canada observes her feast day tomorrow, while the rest of the Church observes it today, on the anniversary of her death.

Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1800, Émilie was the last of 15 children born to Antoine Tavernier and Marie-Josephte Maurice.

Her early years were filled with grief and loss, as her mother died when she was four, her father died when she was a teenager, and nine of her fourteen elder siblings would not reach adulthood.

After her parents’ deaths, she went to live with her aunt and uncle, who sent her to the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame in Montreal. There, she would develop a desire for acts of piety and a desire to serve the poor and hurting, having experienced so much pain herself.

As a young woman, she bore the burden of caring for many sick relatives, including her widowed brother, Francois. She pondered becoming a nun at this point in her life, but God had other plans.

In 1823, Emilie would marry Jean-Baptiste Gamelin, a bachelor twenty-seven years her senior. He was a fruit broker who shared her love of helping the poor, which the two would pursue together. They would also have three sons. Unfortunately, tragedy was to strike again, as two of their sons would die, followed by her husband’s death, and then the death of their third child.

In the face of unimaginable loss, Émilie had been charged by her husband to care for a man who had saved his life, as well as the man’s mother. These two would be the first of many welcomed into Émilie’s home and care.

Charity became a way to cope with her grief.

Within a year of her husband’s death, she joined two separate relief societies dedicated to helping the poor and began dispensing with her modest wealth to help others.

By 1830, she opened an institution of her own, a women’s shelter that would outgrow its facilities several times throughout the decade.

In addition to her more regular charities, Émilie jumped into action as events struck her community. Throughout the 1830s, multiple cholera epidemics struck Lower Canada, and she ministered both to the patients and the families who lost loved ones.

Disease was not the only source of suffering for the Québécois; these Canadiens were not immune to the political upheavals sweeping the western world in this age of revolutions. The Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837-1838 saw hundreds of “Patriots” rise up against the ruling British government.

As the Patriotes ended up in British custody, Émilie would be the only person to obtain official authorization to visit them in prison, and she would temporarily leave her organized charity work to become the “Angel of the Political Prisoners.”

During this period, Émilie herself would become terribly ill with typhoid fever, but she would recover.

Montreal remained in rough shape, and as its political situation deteriorated, the church leadership underwent changes that would lead to a revival in which Émilie would play a major role.

In 1840, Ignace Bourget became the new bishop of Montreal after the death of his predecessor, Jean-Jacques Lartigue. Bourget sought to make the church’s charitable work more official and attempted to import the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul from France. When that did not work out, he established a new order that would run an asylum for elderly and infirm women.

Several women joined up, but Èmilie was content with the houses under her care. She eventually entered, perhaps at Bourget’s encouragement, and was quickly sent to the United States to visit a community founded by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.

Upon returning to Montreal, Émilie and her fellow novices took their vows, and Émilie became Mother Gamelin, the superior of this new order of the Sisters of Providence. The Sisters would continue Émilie’s pattern of opening more homes for the poor, the sick, and the infirm, as epidemics of typhus and cholera struck throughout the 1840s.

Émilie, always near the sick, would catch cholera herself in 1851 and succumb to its horrors within twelve hours, dying on the 23^rd of September.

Her last will was a final exhortation to her religious community to press on in humility, simplicity, and charity.

The order would continue its work, and today, there are Sisters of Providence communities around the globe. In 2001, Pope John Paul II would beatify her, cementing her legacy as a model of the Christian life, and so we remember Émilie on the anniversary of her death on this day in 1851. Born in 1800, she was 51 years old.

 

The last word for today comes from Matthew 18:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

²He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them.³And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.⁴Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.⁵And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 23^rd of September 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

This show has been produced by Christopher Gillespie.

This episode has been written and read by Sam Leanza Ortiz, who wishes her husband, Patrick, a very happy birthday. I’m filling in for Dan van Voorhis, who would point out that Canadian with ending “ian” is English, but Canadien, with an “ien,” like the Montreal-based hockey team, is French.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.