Hélène de Chappotin (1839—1904) et les Franciscaines missionnaires de Marie, “Oser sa vie.” (review)

Hélène de Chappotin (1839—1904) et les Franciscaines missionnaires de Marie, "Oser sa vie." By Marcel Launay. (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. 2001. Pp. 262. 150 F paperback.)

Hélène de Chappotin (in religious life, Marie de la Passion), foundress of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary and a candidate for beatification, was fond of saying that she had the blood of Dominic de Guzman flowing through her veins. This bit of family history probably gave her a strong sense of historical-rootedness. But it also likely helped her to face a host of personal challenges, including the untimely death of her mother (precipitated by her decision to enter religious life), conflicts she had with superiors when she directed Reparatrice convents in India, and her decision to found a new religious order. The reward today, almost one hundred years after her death, is a thriving international religious society that counts 8,200 female missionaries of seventy-two different nationalities, at work on all continents, in a total of seventy-six countries.

There are at least six other book-length biographies of Hélène de Chappotin, but Professor Launay of the University of Nantes, an author of significant publications in the immediate field—including a two-volume study of the diocese of Nantes during the Second Empire and a tome on Leo XIII and Pius X—has been able to set the story of Hélène's life into a much richer historical context. Theresult is an excellent biography that draws heavily on the latest scholarly monographs and an abundance of archival sources, including 26,462 of the foundress's letters.

Launay provides an intimate portrait of a woman from a privileged and staunchly Legitimist and Ultramontane background who was raised to serve "God and Country." She early decided that she would be a Joan of Arc for Henry V (p. 36), but a few years later, when the Bishop of Natchez visited her home, telling tales of "savages" who "knew neither Jesus nor Mary," Hélène enthusiastically proclaimed that she would become a missionary. Launay calls her an idealist, inspired by "grand causes" (p. 42).

Particularly noteworthy in the book is Launay's effort to trace Hélène's intellectual and spiritual development. As a youngster, she was already addicted to reading, and soon started following contemporary political developments, expressing extreme frustration that she could not join troops fighting for the Pope. Decades later, she regretted Emile Combes's actions, but saw worse problems in the general decline of faith (p. 198). Spiritually, her anchor was Franciscan piety, which continually deepened in her. Indeed, it was Franciscan poverty (and sense of charity), she declared, that truly liberated her to do the work of God. Launay is very good in providing the reader with a larger view of both nineteenth-century spirituality and the burgeoning French missionary activity, arguing that with institutionally-loyal women like Hélène who "went out to change the world," we can see a powerful French and Christian feminism (p. 14). Hélène's new order was truly international, not French, and as such, it was and still is a great emblem of Leo XIII's "papal [missionary] strategy." Thus, this book contributes important historical context for both Hélène's beatification and John Paul II's Redemptoris Missio.

I have only two small criticisms. First, the book deserves a real index, with content entries, and second, the map of India supplementing Chapters III and IV should neither be relegated to the back of the text, nor be so illegible. But these problems aside, this is a fine book, one that should even be translated into other languages. As the story of the remarkable and bold life of Hélène de Chappotin, told against the broad sweep of the...