Butler, Marie Joseph, Mother
BUTLER, MARIE JOSEPH, MOTHER
Religious superior, educator; b. Kilkenny, Ireland, July 22, 1860; d. Tarrytown, N.Y., April 23, 1940. After being educated by the Sisters of Mercy, she entered the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Mary at Beziers, France, at the age of 16. Before taking her first vows, she was sent to Portugal. She was recalled in 1903 to head the congregation's second American foundation, in Long Island City, N.Y. For the next 37 years she planned an expansion program that produced 14 American schools, including six Marymounts (three of them colleges) and a New York novitiate, and 23 foreign institutions, including a novitiate in Ireland and Marymount schools in Rome, Paris, and Canada. She was foundress of an international educative program. Mother Butler's cause for canonization was officially opened in 1948. Her remains rest in the crypt at Marymount, Tarrytown.
Bibliography: k. burton, Mother Butler of Marymount (New York 1944). j. k. leahy, As an Eagle: The Spiritual Writings of Mother Butler, RSHM (New York 1954).
[f. de s. boran]