Born Eulalie Durocher in St. Antoine, Quebec, Canada in 1911, Blessed Marie Rose Durocher, foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, was a woman of extraordinary faith and courage. When her mother died, she went to live with her brother who was a pastor in a neighboring village. She assisted him with the work in the parish and developed the gifts of the Spirit which prepared her for the work God later called her to do. There she also became the prefect of the first parish sodality for young women in Canada. A year later, in 1843, the local bishop, Igace Bourget, invited her to found a new religious congregation dedicated to the Christian education of the poor in the area. She and two of her friends responded eagerly and immediately began the religious congregation and their first schools. By the time of Marie Rose’s death, only six years after her founding the congregation, thirty Sisters were already teaching 384 students in four schools.
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