Sister Faustina Kowalska: Her LIfe and MIssion

THE CONGREGATION OF SISTERS OF OUR LADY OF MERCY The Congregation of S isters of Our Lady of Mercy is not an old Congregation. I t arose a t the beginning of the n ine teen th century as a Ch ris tian response to a long-standing social evil, which was then g rea tly increasing: prostitu tion and its p itiable victims, the girls of easy virtue. The Congregation was founded in France - divine irony! - th a t very country which, as a resu lt of the Revolution of 1789, had become th e most dechrist­ ianized s ta te of the Europe of those days. The Found­ ress was a young lady from a prosperous bourgeois family, Therese Rondeau /1793-1866/, who, encouraged by the Je su its , in 1818 opened a "House of Mercy" in h e r home town of Laval in the D epartm en t of Mayenne in B rittany. The House was in tended as a refuge for those girls who, having "fallen", w anted to rehab ilita te themselves, b u t were now social outcasts, condemned and th ru s t aside with contempt by society and with little hope of freeing themselves from the kind of life into which they had sunk. These "fallen" girls, whose number was constantly increasing, were of in te re s t to the S ta te only from th e po in t of view of public hea lth and safety. Society, particu larly provincial society still guided by the old moral rigour, was disposed only to t r e a t them with unbend ing ostracism and contempt. The ba rr ie rs of conduct hav ing once been crossed, there was no way back, so th a t such girls and women of necessity went on th e s tree ts and became professional prostitutes. 389