Saint Léonie Aviat

Léonie Aviat was born at Sézanne, in Champagne, on September 16, 1844. ¹⁴ Antonio Borrelli's biography on santiebeati describes her parents as Christian and honest shopkeepers, who, as was the custom, sent her at ten to the Visitation nuns at Troyes. ⁴ She stayed until she was sixteen, made her first communion and was confirmed there. ⁴

Two people at the monastery shaped her: its superior, Mother Marie de Sales Chappuis, and its chaplain, Father Louis Brisson. ¹⁴ The Holy See's biography for her canonization says that she was formed "at the school of St. Francis de Sales", and Borrelli that she was introduced there to the Salesian teaching on abandonment to the will of God. ¹⁴

She left school meaning to return to the Visitation as a lay sister. ¹ Borrelli adds that she turned down an advantageous marriage. ⁴ Brisson and Mother Chappuis advised her to wait, and she took their advice, the biography says, as God's will. ¹

The large industrial concerns of the time were drawing an underpaid labor force into the cities, and in Troyes the textile mills employed young girls from the countryside. ¹ In 1858 Brisson, whom the Holy See's biography calls one of the forerunners of the great social movement of the late nineteenth century, had opened a center for them, the Oeuvre Saint-François de Sales, to give them a complete human and Christian education. ¹ He could not find a suitable director or a stable staff for it, and decided to found a religious congregation. ¹

The sign she was waiting for came, the biography says, in a glassworks at Sézanne, where glasses were made and repaired. ¹ Seeing the workroom full of young women at their work under the watchful and motherly eye of a supervisor, she felt the wish to take her place among them, to counsel and guide them. ¹ When Brisson later showed her his work for factory girls in Troyes, the wish grew stronger. ¹

On April 18, 1866, she joined the Oeuvre Saint-François de Sales with a former classmate from the Visitation, whose name the Holy See gives as Lucie Canuet and Borrelli as Lucie Cannet. ¹⁴ On October 30, 1868, she received the religious habit and the name Sister Françoise de Sales. ¹⁴ In August 1871 she wrote in her notes, in the Holy See's English: "St. Francis de Sales, you have chosen me to be at the head of this little group; give me your spirit, your heart... Grant me a share of your union with God and of that interior spirit which knows how to do everything in union with Him and nothing without Him." ¹

She made her vows on October 11, 1871, and the next year was elected Superior General of the new congregation, which took the name Oblate Sisters of Saint Francis de Sales, meaning, the biography says, offered to God and to their neighbor with their whole lives. ¹ Borrelli describes the houses for working girls she ran, which offered them recreation, safety, and a religious and practical education. ⁴

Under her the congregation spread beyond the factories. Parish grade schools were opened, and in Paris a first boarding school for young ladies, which Mother Aviat directed herself for eight years. ¹⁴ Borrelli says she had the same success with Parisian society as with the working girls of Troyes. ⁴ From its first years the congregation also sent sisters to the missions. ¹

The two main sources describe the middle of her life a little differently. The Holy See's biography speaks of "a period of effacement which brought to light her humility", after which she was elected Superior General again in 1893 and held the office until her death. ¹ Borrelli says she was superior until she died, except for an interval of four years as a simple sister. ⁴ Neither says why.

In those later years, according to the Holy See, she worked to develop the congregation in Europe, South Africa and Ecuador. ¹ Borrelli's list is longer: Namibia, South Africa, Ecuador, Switzerland, Austria, England and Italy. ⁴

In 1903 the French laws against religious orders reached the congregation. ¹⁴ Borrelli, who names Émile Combes as their author, says that 23 houses of the work were closed, besides six belonging to the Oblate Fathers. ⁴ She kept what could be kept in France and moved the mother-house to Perugia, in Italy, where the sisters had had a house for young domestic workers since 1896. ¹⁴

From there she governed by letters and visits. ⁴ Father Brisson died in his native village on February 2, 1908, and Borrelli records that she could attend his funeral only in lay clothes. ⁴ In her last years she worked on the definitive text of the constitutions, and in 1911 she obtained their final approval from Pope Pius X. ¹⁴

She died at Perugia on January 10, 1914, aged sixty-nine, in the congregation's house there. ¹⁴ The Holy See's biography says she died serenely, entrusting herself entirely to God, faithful to the resolution she had made at her profession, "To forget myself entirely". ¹ Her remains were first buried in the cemetery, then moved to the church of Santa Maria della Valle, and they now rest, Borrelli says, in the crypt of the mother-house at Troyes. ⁴

John Paul II beatified her on September 27, 1992. ³⁴ In his homily, delivered in French and translated here, he said she had answered the call "to bring good news to the poor" by giving her life to the education of young working women in France, in a spirit of detachment summed up in her motto. ³ He quoted her saying that one must "do everything with God and nothing without Him", and that her one desire was to be "God's little instrument". ³

He canonized her on November 25, 2001, together with Joseph Marello, Paula Montal and Crescentia Höss. ² He told her sisters that her resolution to forget oneself completely was "an appeal to go against the current of egotism and easy pleasures", and quoted her prayer, "O my God, let my happiness be found in sacrificing my will and my desires for you!" ²

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for her, so none is given here. ¹²⁴⁵ The Roman Martyrology remembers her as the woman who, "with maternal love and industry", devoted herself to the care of young women and founded the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales. ⁵

Saint Léonie Aviat's feast is January 10, the day she died at Perugia. ¹⁴⁵ The Roman Martyrology enters her under that date as "Saint Frances de Sales (Léonie) Aviat, virgin", translated here from the Italian. ⁵

Her vocation did not come in a chapel. It came in a workroom in a glassworks, watching a supervisor look after the young women at their benches, and wanting to be the person who did that. ¹ She had meant to be a lay sister in an enclosed monastery; the work she was given was in the factory towns. ¹

Her rule of life was short: "To forget myself entirely." ¹ John Paul II returned to it at both her beatification and her canonization. ²³ In 1992 he also recalled her saying that one must do everything with God and nothing without him. ³ He spoke of trials she was not spared, without naming them. ²³ The sources name some: years out of office, the closing of her houses in France, exile, and the death of Father Brisson, whose funeral she could attend only in lay clothes. ¹⁴

The precept she left her sisters was "Let us work for the happiness of others". ¹ It is a modest sentence, and her life gave it a good deal of content: classrooms, boarding schools, houses for working girls, missions from Namibia to Ecuador, and a constitution finished in exile. ¹⁴