Blessed Maria Anna Blondin

Marie Anne Blondin, SSA (18 April 1809 – 2 January 1890) was a Canadian Catholic teacher who founded the Sisters of Saint Anne in 1850 and dedicated herself to educating the rural population of the Province of Canada. She was beatified in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. She was born Esther Blondin on 18 April 1809 in Terrebonne, Lower Canada, to Jean-Baptiste Blondin and Marie-Rose Limoges, simple farmers who lived on a country road called Côte Terrebonne on the edge of the Mille Îsles River. At the age of 20, she became a domestic servant to a local merchant to help support her parents. Shortly after that, she was hired to work for the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal, who staffed the parochial school of the town. Having grown up illiterate, she learned how to read and write from the Sisters of the convent. In 1833 Blondin was accepted into the novitiate of the Congregation, but had to leave soon after her admission for health reasons. Later that same year, Blondin accepted the invitation from another former novice of the Congregation, who was running a parochial school in Vaudreuil, to join her in teaching there. Within a few years, she had become the principal of the school, then known as the Académie Blondin. Over the years, Blondin found out that one of the causes of the widespread illiteracy in the French-speaking community was a certain church ruling that forbade that children be taught by members of the opposite sex. Unable to finance two schools, many parish priests chose to have none. In 1848 Esther presented to the Bishop of Montreal, Ignace Bourget, a plan to found a religious congregation "for the education of poor country children, both girls and boys in the same schools". Despite the novelty of the suggestion, and possible violation of church rules, since the Canadian government was in favor of such schools, he authorized the experiment.