Venerable Caroline Carré de Malberg

Caroline-Barbe Colchen Carré de Malberg (8 April 1829 - 28 January 1891) was a French Roman Catholic from Metz who founded both the Salesian Missionaries of Mary Immaculate and the Association of Saint Francis de Sales (1872). She married in 1849 to her first cousin and co-founded the association with the Servant of God Henri Chaumont and the missionaries with the Servant of God Félice Gros. Her beatification process commenced in 1909 under Pope Pius X and culminated in 2014 after Pope Francis named her Venerable following the recognition of her life of heroic virtue. Caroline-Barbe Colchen Carré de Malberg was born on 8 April 1829 in France to as the second child to the middle-class Françcois Dominique Colchen Victor and Élisabeth-Charlotte Simon. She was baptized in the Church of Saint Martin on 11 April 1829. In her childhood her father had her promise not to miss invoking the intercession of the Blessed Mother; her father served as the regional President of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. She was related to Jean-Victor Colchen (1751-1830) and Claude Nicolas Colchen (1755-1833) who were both cousins of Jean-Pierre Lubin Colchen - her grandfather. In 1841 she began to attend school in Metz and had a long period in which she suffered from typhoid; her studies ended in 1846. Her confessor around that time was the priest Jegou who realized her sincerest desire for personal holiness; the two kept in close contact and the priest was decisive in her realizing her vocation. She felt drawn to a life with the Carmelites as a nun but decided she would not be able to bear it due to her ill health. In 1846 she returned to her hometown and her parents began to prepare her for marriage. Her cousin - Paul Carré (b. 1824) - asked her parents to organize such a marriage with her in 1848 and she replied to this without hesitation in the affirmative. The pair married on 2 May 1849 despite the fact that the two were almost strangers to each other.