Jewels from Jane, Oct. 7

"Amazed at the work in Philadelphia, the Bishop of Toronto, Right Reverend Armand Charbonnel, asked for Sisters and obtained them. His Lordship, on his return from Rome in the autumn of 1851, visited Bishop Kenrick in Philadelphia. While there, he met Mother Delphine whose aunt, Reverend Mother Saint John [Fontbonne], was well known to the Charbonnel family. The Bishop, esteeming the young kinswoman as a valiant woman and capable of undertaking a work which he had in mind, begged the good Bishop Kenrick to allow her, with three other Sisters, to come to his aid in Toronto, where they arrived on October 7, 1851.

"In a letter addressed to Father Denavit, director of the Grand Seminary of Lyons, Bishop Charbonnel said, with reference to the Sisters of Saint Joseph:

'I could make use of one hundred of them at once, if I had them. The Sisters are called to do immense good here. They give everything but absolution.' Mother Delphine went from Toronto to establish a mission in Hamilton. Returning to Toronto to assist in caring for the victims of a typhus epidemic, she contracted the disease and died a victim of her devotion on February 7, 1856."

From Mother Saint John Fontbonne: A Biography translation adapted from the original French edition by a Sister of Saint Joseph Brentwood, New York