On 29 October 1599, the bells of the church of Saint-Saturnin in Tours rang for the baptism of a little girl born on the previous day. Marie Guyart was the fourth child of a family of eight. Florent Guyart, a master baker, and his wife, Jeanne Michelet, were people of solid faith and piety.
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Blessed Ursuline Martyrs of Orange
During the troubles of the French Revolution, 29 Sisters, expelled from their convents, found refuge in a house at Bollène. During their eighteen months there, they shared their life of prayer and total poverty. Arrested in April 1794 because they refused to swear the oath required by the city officials, an oath their conscience condemned, they were jailed on May 2 at Orange, in the Rectory’s prison, near the Cathedral, where 13 other Sisters were already imprisoned.
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Blessed Blandine Merten
Blessed BLANDINE MERTEN was born in Düppenweiler on the Saar, in the diocese of Trier, West Germany, on 10 July 1883. She was the ninth child in a family of ten brothers and sisters. At her baptism she was given the name Mary Magdalene.
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Blessed Natalia Tułasiewicz
Natalia was born on 9th April 1906 in Rzeszów (south-eastern Poland) the second of six children of Adam and Natalia Amalia née Bromnik. Her father worked as a tax clerk, her mother took care of the house and children. They were brought up in a very loving and patriotic family. Natalia was small and physically frail, but had a lively intelligence and was very affectionate.
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Blessed Ursuline Martyrs of Valenciennes
This community offers us a wonderful witness of their faith and fidelity. During the French Revolution it experienced particularly painful situations. It experienced the problems that were those of all religious communities at that time: suppression of religious communities, and their compulsory disappearance, confiscation of their property, presence of a Constitutional clergy, etc. These difficulties increased because they were established in a border area, suffering the moving tide of successive conquests during the war opposing France and Austria from 1792 on.
In this tormented situation, the Ursulines of Valenciennes chose to live, up to their death, their faithfulness to their vocation and to the commitments they had made during their religious profession, and to keep their life in community, relying on the grace of God and the strength of their Ursuline spirituality, very much influenced by a sense of martyrdom.
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Blessed Maria Klemensa Staszewska
Sister Maria Klemensa (Helena) Staszewska was born on 30 July 1890 in Złotczew near Kalisz in a family of many children, whose upbringing was imbued with a religious and patriotic spirit. This atmosphere and the values brought from their home are also evidenced by the fact that two of her sisters joined the Ursulines and died as sisters in a state of holiness (Sr. Gerarda and Sr. Andrzeja). Another sister, Irena, a lay person, was a valued teacher and catechist.
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