St. Madeleine Sophie Barat is a brave saint who lived a heroic life of faith during the tumultuous years of the French Revolution. Madeleine Sophie, who went by Sophie with her family, was born in December of 1779. Sophie was born two months early, because a large fire at the home of their neighbors had caused Sophie's mother, in terror and stress, to go into labor early. Because Sophie was born as a small, fragile child, she was baptized very early the next morning at the nearby church. Sophie's older brother, Louis, who would continue to be an important influence in her life, was her godfather and a woman from their town who had dropped in for morning Mass was elected the godmother.

Sophie's father, Jaques, was a well-respected cooper and vintner. Sophie's parents were Jansenist Catholics. Jansenism was a Dutch theology, similar to Calvinism, that took hold in seventeenth and eighteenth-century France. Jansenism was harshly austere, emphasizing the total depravity of the soul and the utter sovereignty of God's grace—God's grace could be infused in the soul without the person's consent.

Sophie's brother and godfather, Louis, wanted to become a Catholic priest. He went through seminary education when he was a teenager, but was sent home until he was twenty-one, as he was too young to be ordained. In the intervening years, Louis taught Sophie what he had learned in seminary: he taught her Latin, Greek, history, science, and Spanish. Such an education was rare for a girl of Sophie's class and age, and she enjoyed her lessons with her brother until he was finally ordained.

In 1788, Louis took the oath of loyalty to the state that the new French government required for seminarians and clergy. Four years later, learning that the pope had condemned the oath, Louis retracted. He was immediately sought out for arrest and execution. Louis hid in a family member's attic until he was imprisoned. Louis escaped the guillotine by the brave intervention of a friend. He and Sophie hid in Paris, where Louis was ordained secretly and Sophie continued her education with him while attempting to become a Carmelite.

But, several years later, Sophie met a priest named Joseph Varin, who wanted to found a women's order dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a popular devotion in French spirituality. In 1800, Sophie took her first vows as a member of the new religious congregation of the Society of the Sacred Heart. The sisters kept their name secret from the French government, and quietly opened a school in the north of France. Within four years, they had opened schools all over France that provided much-needed Catholic education to impoverished children. Within twenty years, there were schools spreading out over the European continent and even in America.

Sophie became Superior General of the Society and led her sisters through the rule of Napoleon and two more French revolutions. She died in Paris on May 25, 1865, the feast of the Ascension that year. She was canonized less than one hundred years later by Pope Pius Xi in 1925.

St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, who spread the Catholic faith through education during tumultuous French revolutions—pray for us!

Image: the statue of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat stands in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and is by Enrico Quatrini.