Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de Lamourous

Venerable Marie-Thérèse de Lamourous (November 1, 1754 – September 14, 1836) was a French Lay-woman who was a member of the underground Church during the French Revolution, after the Revolution she founded a house for repentant prostitutes at Bordeaux called “The Miséricorde.” Her feast day is September 14.

Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Lamourous was born at Barsac, Gironde on November 1, 1754. She was the first of 11 children born to Louis Marc Antoine de Lamourous du Mayne and Elisabeth de Vincens de Lamourous du Mayne. Only five children survived into adulthood. Both families were prominent and very old French nobility. Louis Marc Antoine was a lawyer (after his father) and was attached to the Bordeaux parlement. The Family moved to Bordeaux in 1766 (Marie Thérèse was 12). There she received her First Communion in 1767 and was educated by her mother, who had attended a convent school.

With the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Marie Thérèse (then 35) became a faithful member of the underground Church. She was an important link in the network of ministries and good works that developed under the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Bordeaux, Fr. Joseph Boyer. Aside from visiting the sick, teaching catechism, visiting prisoners and helping to keep the clergy in touch, Marie Thérèse, dressed as a peasant, would enter the offices of the committee of supervision and read the list of planned arrests and executions while pretending to clean the building. She used this information to help people escape the guillotine.

In 1794 authorities in Paris expelled all French nobility from France's port cities. Marie Thérèse, her father, two sisters, and two very young nephews moved to the family’s estate at Pian. Marie Thérèse would still return to Bordeaux frequently to continue her ministries there. The parish at Pian was without a priest and Marie Thérèse became like a pastor for that congregation. She gathered people together for Sunday worship, taught catechism and even ‘heard’ confessions (she could not grant absolution, but she listened and gave advice). In the absence of a priest, she gave her own confession to a portrait of St. Vincent de Paul. Despite all these ministries she was able to live a rather secluded and contemplative life in a small hermitage on her property. With the rise of Napoleon in 1800 the Revolution ended and Marie Thérèse (now 46) was able to move back and forth from Bordeaux freely

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