St. Mary Hermina Grivot

  Posted on July 8, 2019  by admin  No comments

Born: 28 April 1866 in Beaune, France

Died: beheaded on 9 July 1900 at Taiyuanfu, China

Canonized: 1 October 2000 by Pope John Paul II in Rome

Venerated: 3 January 1943 by Pope Pius XII (decree of martyrdom)

Beatified: 24 November 1946 by Pope Pius XII

Daughter of a cooper and a housekeeper. Irma was an active, affectionate, sensitive, intelligent but sickly child, and her education stopped at the elementary level. She felt drawn to religious life, but her family opposed it, She worked as a tutor to make her own way, and in 1894 she entered a pre-novitiate of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary at Vanves near Paris, France, then her novitiate at Les Châtelets in July, taking the name Marie Hermine de Jésus. Her poor health caused her to spend a longer than usual noviate, proving that she was capable of the rigors of missionary life. She served in her house by taking care of the accounts in Les Chatelets and Vanves, caring for the sick in Marseilles, France and then as superior of the missionaries in Taiyuanfu, China. In 1898 she and six sisters were sent to the Shanxi diocese in China to serve the poor in hospitals, and care for the unwanted or other destitutes in orphanages. There they all died in the Boxer Rebellion. One of the Martyrs of Shanxi and the Martyrs of China.