which Pope St. John Paul II personally blessed in 1996. The said icon displays the image of Mary Immaculate surrounded by the Latin names of the Mary’s 10 virtues, mentioned in the Rule. The spirit of The Rule of the Ten Virtues is also present in the Congregation’s modern-day Constitutions. The paragraph 16 reads: “The titular Patroness of the Congregation is the Immaculately Conceived Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, to whom they shall show special veneration, filial love and devotion, as to their Queen and Lady, very powerful Helper and most loving Mother. Let them go through her to Jesus, invoke her frequently in suppliant entreaty, run to her with the greatest confidence in all their needs, imitate her virtues with all their strength.” The wish of St. Joan de Valois was to found a male branch of her Order. In a certain sense, this wish came true two centuries after her death, when the Marian Order — as the first and thus far the only one — accepted The Rule of the Ten Virtues of the B.V.M. adopted for male religious. * * * The goal of this edition of The Rule of Ten Virtues of the B.V.M. is above all to make known its Marian features to all those who wish to live by the spirituality of the Congregation of Marian Fathers. 34
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