Date Published:
July 2008

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Vallier

Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Vallier. The Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Vallier was founded in the city of Le Puy-en-Velay, Haute Loire, France, in 1650. The annals of the order show that on October 15, 1650, the first daughters of St. Joseph were presented by Father Jean Paul Medaille, a famous Jesuit missionary, to the bishop of Le Puy. These young ladies had been already formed by Father Medaille on his ideal, that of realizing the original plan of St. Francis de Sales. They received from the bishop on that same day the holy habit of the Sisters of St. Joseph. The care of destitute children, the charge of hospitals, and the education of youth became the Sisters' first steps in the public life of charity. In 1683 the house of the Sisters of St. Joseph was established at St. Vallier. Bishop St. Vallier, the second bishop of Quebec, desirous of having nuns to take charge of a hospital he had recently founded in that town, obtained from Le Puy Convent the Sisters he required. From the date of their foundation up to the present day the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Vallier have never ceased to devote themselves both to hospital work and to a variety of labours in accord with the spirit of their founders. Later, the establishment in St. Valier became a mother-house, to which was attached a novitiate; and on September 27, 1890, the mules and constitutions of that Institute were definitely approved by Pope Leo XIII. In 1903 the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Valier came to Canada, where they have a number of convents in the diocese of Quebec. The principal apostolate of the Sisters of St. Joseph in that diocese has been and is to the present day the teaching of parochial schools. Their educational houses are affiliated with Laval University. Their provincial house is in the city of Quebec.

Source: W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Volume VI, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 398p., pp. 18-19.