Blessed Alix Le Clerc

Alix Le Clerc (2 February 1576 – 9 January 1622), known as Mother Alix, was a French religious leader and founder of the Canonesses of Saint-Augustin of the Notre-Dame Congregation (French: Notre-Dame), a religious order created to provide education to girls, especially those living in poverty. They opened Schools of Our Lady throughout Europe. Offshoots of this order brought its mission and spirit around the globe. Le Clerc was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1947. Alix (the local form of Alice) Le Clerc was born on 2 February 1576 into a wealthy family in Remiremont in the independent Duchy of Lorraine, part of the Holy Roman Empire. She was a vivacious girl who loved music and dancing. She would spend her evenings partying with her young friends. When she was about 18, her family moved to Mattaincourt, a manufacturing center. Three years later, a sudden illness confined her to her bed. While there, her only reading material was a devotional book. From the reading and reflection she was able to do while recuperating from her illness, Le Clerc began to feel the need for a change in her life. She approached the pastor of the town, Dom Peter Fourier, with whom she shared this growing conviction about the need for a new direction in her life, but that none of the religious orders appealed to her. A purported vision of Our Lady answered her questioning and gave her the direction she sought, as she felt called to care for the daughters of the poor of the region, who had little or no access to education. Supported in this by Fourier, who himself had seen the desperate need for this among the rural populace of his parish, Le Clerc resolved to commit her life to this goal. She was joined in this enterprise by four of her friends, with whom she established a community where they could follow lives of simplicity, prayer, and respecting the presence of God in each girl whom they would receive for instruction.