PROVIDENCE — Faithful Companions of Jesus, an International Congregation of Catholic Sisters founded by Marie Madeleine d’Houët, are getting ready to celebrate their Bicentenary.
The religious sisters, who served in USA since 1895, is approaching a significant landmark in its life and history: 200 years since its foundation in Amiens, France. For the FCJs, their Companions in Mission, friends, colleagues and associates, celebrations will begin on the Foundress’s birthday, Sept. 21, 2019, and end on the Feast of Christ the King, Nov. 22, 2020.
The Faithful Companions of Jesus taught locally at Blessed Sacrament School in Providence from its very beginning in 1925. The religious sisters were invited to Providence by Bishop William A. Hickey who saw the need for a Catholic School in the diocese of Providence. Many Sisters, FCJ, devoted years of their lives to educating the children of Providence from 1925 through 1989. Today one sister is still teaching at Blessed Sacrament. The religious sisters also taught at St. Patrick’s High School from 1933 until 1984 when changing times led to regionalization of high schools. The Faithful Companions of Jesus were recognized as amazing educators.
In 1927, the Superior General of the Faithful Companions of Jesus, bought property on the Narraganset Bay in Portsmouth for the sisters to use as a summer vacation. In 1953, at the request of neighbors on Cory’s Lane, four FCJs, welcomed seven students to St. Philomena School which began it’s 66th year in September. St. Philomena School was staffed by FCJs for many years, but has transitioned to a lay faculty and administration that continues to be inspired by the charism of Venerable Marie Madeleine and her sisters, FCJ.
Marie Madeleine de Bengy was born in the small town of Chateauroux, near Bourges in central France, in 1781 and was brought up in the social and religious turmoil that followed the French Revolution. She married Joseph de Bonnault d’Houët in 1804, but a year later, the marriage came to an untimely end when Joseph died of typhoid; their son Eugène was born three months after his father’s death.
A young, widow, Marie Madeleine was reluctant at first to believe that God was calling her to a radical life of prayer and service in the Church and world of her time. Gradually, with God’s help and the guidance of her Jesuit spiritual directors, she began to discern the path ahead more clearly.
Finally, in 1820, at the age of 38, having attended to her son’s education and future, she opened a school in Amiens, thus marking the foundation of the Society of the Faithful Companions of Jesus.
“I will follow my patron saint, who so loved Jesus as to accompany him in his journeys and his labours, ministering to him even at the foot of the Cross with the other holy women who did not abandon him but proved to be his faithful companions,” she said.
Before her death in 1858, Marie Madeleine founded schools and orphanages not only in France, but also in England, Switzerland, Italy and Ireland. Since then the Society of the Faithful Companions of Jesus has continued to spread, with Sisters and Companions in Mission (lay Associates) now in Australia, Belgium, England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, France, Romania, Canada, USA, Argentina, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar and South Sudan.
