The causes for beatification and canonization of the founders of the RHSJ were introduced in Rome in the 1930s without results. Later, the dossiers or Positiones prepared by Dom Guy-Marie Oury, OSB, were submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints between May 1992 and July 1995. They were favourably evaluated by historical consultants in 1993, 1995, and 1997.
Recognition of “heroic virtues” confers on a person, including a lay person, the title of Venerable. This is a first step, before beatification, which recognizes the title of Blessed, while canonization recognizes someone as a saint of the Catholic Church.
Jérôme Le Royer de la Dauversière, a tax collector in La Flèche, France, is a family man and a man of prayer and action.
On February 2, 1630, he felt called by God to found a community of Daughters Hospitallers dedicated to the Holy Family under the protection of Saint Joseph, for the service of the sick poor.
Driven by an unshakeable faith, Jerome undertook the other missions received from Heaven: to colonize and evangelize the Island of Montreal and to establish a hospital there served by the Daughters of Saint Joseph.
By the decree of heroic virtues signed in Rome on July 6, 2007, Jérôme Le Royer was declared “Venerable” by Benedict XVI.
Marie de la Ferre was born in Roiffé, a small village in the diocese of Poitiers, France, in 1589. The death of her mother around 1601 and her father’s second marriage disrupted the girl’s life. Her aunt, Madame de Goubitz, then welcomed her into the Grand Ruigné manor near La Flèche. The social life was lively and the young girl took a liking to it.
Around the age of 18, Marie realized that only the love of God and of her neighbour could give meaning to her life. She began serving her aunt and cousins. She also visited the poor of Sainte-Colombe and the sick at home and then at the Hôtel-Dieu in La Flèche, which Jérôme Le Royer had renovated. Marie de la Ferre would co-found the community of the Daughters Hospitallers of Saint Joseph, founded by Jérôme Le Royer.
In May 1636, Marie de la Ferre entered the Hôtel-Dieu to serve the sick poor with four companions. In 1651, she becae superior and founder of a hospital in Moulins. She died there the following year, a victim of her charity for the sick, during an epidemic.
The Roman Congregation for the Causes of Saints recognized the “heroic virtues” of Marie de la Ferre on April 3, 2009.
These reliquaries of the founders were once kept in the community of the Religious Hospitallers of La Flèche: on the right the box of bones of Marie de la Ferre and on the left the reliquary of the heart of Jérôme Le Royer.