Delia Tetreault, Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception Founder

Venerable Délia Tétrault and the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (M.I.C.)

Who is Délia Tétreault? (1865-1941)

Délia Tétreault was born on February 4, 1865, in Marieville, Quebec Province, Canada. After two experiences, mystical and prophetic, the Good Lord (le bon Dieu, as she called her God) confirmed and affirmed her vocation and her mission. A prophetic experience came when she was around nine. She had a dream of a wheat field covered with children's heads of different nationalities. During a mystical experience at the age of eighteen, she became aware of being filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would direct her.

She was destined to become the foundress of the first woman religious congregation for an ad gentes mission in North America in 1902, the Diocese of Montreal. Later she was the main inspiration for the Bishops of Quebec to establish a Society for Foreign Mission called the Quebec Foreign Mission Society in 1920. Venerable Délia is known in the Province of Quebec, as a French-Canadian woman whose heart was as big as the world. She died in 1941, and was given the title "venerable" by Pope John Paul II in 1997.

Her legacy, a spirituality of thanksgiving which is Marian and missionary, is very much alive in the hearts of her daughters, who are multicultural and serve in four continents around the world.

What is her legacy?

The article, Origin of a Spirituality of Thanksgiving Which Is Marian and Missionary in Character, is an open window for many to know her better, and to recognize the wonders that God has done through her for her daughters, the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. Their heritage is to live a life of perpetual thanksgiving in a Marian and missionary way. Indeed, like Mary, the M.I.C. sisters sing a life long Magnificat throughout time and space, in their own name, and for those who do not yet know the Good News of Jesus Christ (cf. M.I.C. Common Mission). The motto of this women's religious congregation is "that the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Virgin Mary be known from pole to pole."