Julie Frances Catharine Postel, the daughter of a rope manufacturer, was born at Barfleur in Normandy on November 28, 1756. After her elementary education, she received further training from the Benedictine nuns at Volognes. There she decided to devote her entire life to the service of God and her neighbor, and privately took the vow of chastity.
Five years after she opened a school for girls in La Bretonne, the French Revolution broke out. During the persecution Saint Mary Magdalen Postel played a heroic part in helping the priests who were in hiding or in prison and in strengthening the faith of the loyal Catholics of Barfleur. She was authorized to keep the Blessed Sacrament in her house, and when conditions grew worse to carry the Blessed Sacrament on her person and even to administer Holy Viaticum to the dying in cases of emergency. The Jacobins often suspected her, but she enjoyed the special protection of God and no harm came to her.
After the storm had passed, Saint Mary Magdalen Postel helped to restore the Faith by catechizing young and old, and began to teach school once more at Cherbourg. With the approval of the Vicar Louis Cabart, she and two other women established a religious community there in 1805; and two years later they and another who had joined them pronounced their vows. They called themselves the Poor Daughters of Mercy and observed the rule of the Third Order of St Francis.
From the internet site Roman Catholic Saints.
There is a good novel waiting to be written about this saintly female version of the fictional Scarlet Pimpernel and her exploits during the French Revolution.
