Mariam Baouardy

Life events

1. Born — 1846

   Mariam Baouardy was born on 5 January 1846 in the Galilean village of Hurfeish, in the Ottoman Empire, the thirteenth child and first daughter of Giries Baouardy and Mariam Chahine, a Melkite Greek Catholic family originally from Damascus. Her parents had made a pilgrimage on foot to Bethlehem before her birth, vowing to name a daughter after the Virgin Mary.

2. Other — 1858

   At age thirteen, Baouardy refused an arranged marriage brokered by her uncle in Cairo, declaring a vocation to religious life. When a servant subsequently attacked her for rejecting his proposal to convert to Islam, he cut her throat; she described a month of miraculous recovery tended by an unidentified figure in blue before returning to domestic service.

3. Pilgrimage — 1859

   Traveling by caravan from Cairo to Jerusalem, Baouardy made a vow of perpetual virginity at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. She then attempted to sail to Acre but disembarked at Beirut, where she worked as a maid and experienced a 40-day episode of blindness followed by sudden recovery.

4. Tonsured — 1867

   In June 1867, Baouardy received the Discalced Carmelite religious habit at the monastery in Pau, France, and was given the religious name Mary of Jesus Crucified. She had earlier received the stigmata in May 1865 while a postulant with the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition in Marseille.

5. Ordained — 1871

   In November 1871, Baouardy made her profession of solemn vows at the Carmelite community in Pau, after serving two years with the first group of Carmelite Apostolic Sisters at Mangalore, India, from 1870.

6. Other — 1875

   In September 1875, Baouardy helped to found a new Carmelite monastery in Bethlehem — the first of the Discalced Carmelite Order in that region — where she lived for the remainder of her life.

7. Died — 1878

   Baouardy died on 26 August 1878 in Bethlehem from bone cancer that had developed from a fall sustained while working in the monastery, which led to gangrene that spread to her lungs. She was 32 years old.

8. Other — 2015

   Pope Francis canonized Baouardy on 17 May 2015. She was the second Melkite Greek Catholic to be formally canonized a saint of the Catholic Church, after Josaphat Kuntsevych in 1867. She had been beatified by Pope John Paul II on 13 November 1983.

Relationships

Documented claims

• Baouardy received the stigmata in May 1865 while a postulant with the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition in Marseille, France — before she had formally entered any religious order. (likely)
• A French doctor later measured the scar on Baouardy's throat at 10 cm (nearly 4 inches) wide — the wound inflicted in Cairo around 1858. Her voice remained affected for the rest of her life. (plausible)
• The Carmelite monastery Baouardy co-founded in Bethlehem in September 1875 was the first house of the Discalced Carmelite Order established in that region. (likely)
• In April 1878, four months before her death, Baouardy played a role in identifying the location of the biblical Emmaus through what was described as a private revelation. (plausible)
• Baouardy's 2015 canonization made her the second Melkite Greek Catholic to be formally declared a saint by the Catholic Church; the first was Josaphat Kuntsevych, canonized in 1867. (certain)