Mary Virginia Merrick

Mary Virginia Merrick (November 2, 1866 – January 10, 1955), born in Washington, DC, was a pioneer in American Catholic social reform. At age 20, despite being paralyzed, from a fall, and confined to her bed or reclining wheelchair, she started the Christ Child Society in 1887 to provide for needy infants, children, and their families in the Washington, D.C. area. During her lifetime she grew the National Christ Child Society to 38 chapters and today it operates chapters in 43 locations with nearly 6,000 members.

Merrick's cause for canonization began in 2001 in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington; she was designated a "Servant of God" in the Roman Catholic Church in 2003. The Archdiocesan Phase of her Cause for Beatification and Canonization was opened in 2011. If she is canonized, Merrick will be one of the first U.S.-born saints in the Roman Catholic Church and among a small number of disabled saints.

Mary Virginia Merrick was born to prominent parents Richard and Nannie Merrick. Richard Merrick was a well-known lawyer, a founder of Georgetown University Law Center, and a descendant of former Maryland Governor Leonard Calvert. The family of Nannie Merrick was well known for its success in business and its work in establishing Washington, D.C.'s first art collection, the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Merrick grew up in a devoutly-Catholic environment fostered by her parents and was educated by French nurses and tutors who stressed the Catholic tradition and piety. She developed a deep faith and a love for helping others at an early age while visiting and assisting local poor and vulnerable families with her mother. She aspired to become a nun after a religious conversion experience soon after her eleventh birthday.

In her early teen years, Merrick had a fall from a playhouse, beginning the deterioration of her health and her eventual confinement to a bed or recumbent wheelchair.

As a teenager, Merrick began to sew clothing for poor children from her reclining position, eventually organizing a small sewing circle to complete a layette in honor of the "Christ Child" to be given to a poor infant during the Christmas season. The following year, she encouraged a child of one her family's employees who told her he was unlikely to receive a Christmas gift to write letters to the Christ Child to request one. Thereafter, children began sending letters to the Christ Child requesting Christmas gifts, and she and her friends would fill the requests, noting them "from the Christ Child."

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